


All Together, All Alone

by magicites



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Roleswap, in which Kairi is Ven and Naminé is Vanitas, with the addition of a little blood for imagery's sake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-25 08:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19742305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicites/pseuds/magicites
Summary: Naminé drops to a kneel directly in front of Kairi. Her hand, her bloodstained fingers, find Kairi’s cheek. Her touch is so gentle against Kairi’s skin, holding her like she’s something precious. Something fragile.Naminé smiles at her. “Don’t you understand, Kairi? You and I are the same.”Her other hand goes to Kairi’s throat and rests there. Not an action. Only a threat. “We were never supposed to have a choice.”(A Destiny Trio/Wayfinder roleswap, where things still don't quite work out the way Kairi wishes they would.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is very much inspired by a few roleswap fanarts i saw on twitter a while back, [this one in particular](https://twitter.com/oneupboy/status/1109477379993423877). naminitas has the COOLEST AESTHETIC and i ended up spending waaaaay too much time thinking about how this could work and ended up with this monster of a two-shot.
> 
> this plays very fast and very loose with lore and not everything directly translates over! sometimes you just gonna do stuff because it looks Cool

There is a girl in the mist.

Fog hangs low and heavy in the Land of Departure, clinging to the rocks within the training grounds and wrapping around the hanging lamps like they have no claim to their own existence. From a distance, there are times when it gathers so heavily that Kairi could mistake it for a sheet of paper. Blank. Empty. Obscuring what she knows in her heart to exist. 

On the nights when Kairi can tear herself from the stars and her sky-high dreams of visiting the worlds that shine above her, she can see the faintest outline of a girl. She blends in with the fog, but there are small glitches of disarray that convince Kairi that she’s more than just a dream. A flash of yellow, the shade shared by dying daffodils. A glint of pale blue. Red, red blood, trailing down a fingertip.

Until Kairi blinks, and the girl is gone. Like she was only ever a trick of the light.

Though Sora and Riku humor Kairi, they don’t believe her. They spend more than one night waiting for the Master to sleep only to sneak out onto the training grounds to find this ghostly girl. The fog turns to mist as they walk through it, hands parting the translucent wetness with ease. There are times when she’ll catch something vaguely human out of the corner of her eye, but it always fades to nothing when she faces it head-on.

Kairi always feels ready to cry after those searches, though she never knows why.

And when the morning comes and the fog is burned away by a cheerful sun, her mind will go to happier places: to a breakfast spent among precious people, to katas that make her muscles sing with exhaustion, and the mantle of Keyblade Master that waits for her to wear it.

* * *

Kairi makes three lucky charms. Wayfinders, the sailors of ages past used to call them. They’re traditionally made of seashells, but with no beaches to comb in the Land of Departure, Kairi dedicates countless nights to sculpting molten glass and scalding metal to her whims.

She imbues it with magic, spells drifting from her lips that aren’t born from her mind, but from the prayers of her heart. No matter where Kairi goes, no matter the trials she’ll have to face or the struggles to overcome, she wants nothing more than to remain at Sora and Riku’s side.

The Wayfinders are bathed in white light when she finally finishes them, the warmth in her palms as she cradles them close to her chest entirely separate from the flames she used to temper them to completion.

“They’re good luck charms,” she explains to Sora and Riku as she hands them their charms. A rusty red for Sora, a bright yellow for Riku, and a cheerful pink for herself. “I read about a world where sailors would wear these to ensure safe travels. That way, they could always find their way back to what matters to them. As long as we have these, we’ll have a connection that can never be broken. The three of us will always be together!”

“A connection that can never be broken, huh?” Sora asks, holding his Wayfinder up to the lanterns. It casts a red shadow on the ground, large enough to bathe his legs in its refracted light.

Riku holds it up as well, chuckling. Yellow light plays over his arms. “You’re such a girl sometimes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” Kairi shoots back. “I’m always a girl!”

They all laugh, content to spend the rest of the evening together in the easy companionship that has defined their bond since she can remember.

Only Kairi notices the mist that closes in on the clearing as they leave.

* * *

For all the nights Kairi forgoes sleep to further her studies, her four paltry years of apprenticeship could never compare to the seven and eight respective years that Sora and Riku have on her. 

She is slightly older than Sora, she thinks. She does not remember her birthday, lost in the dark storm clouds that overtake her mind whenever she tries to think of the life she led before this castle welcomed her home, but she thinks it must be before Sora’s. Sora agrees, because she seems like a spring baby to him. Riku agrees, because she’s less of a baby than Sora is to him.

So she is fifteen, possibly. Probably. Just like Sora. Only a year behind Riku.

Yet when the day comes and the Master begins the Mark of Mastery exam, his old companion _(a man whose face feels more familiar than she wishes it did, though the storm clouds prevent her from knowing why)_ at his side, she stands on the sidelines once more. She isn’t far enough along in her studies to take the exam, according to the Master. She wants to protest - her body may be weaker than theirs, but she’s always handled her techniques with a grace that neither boy can muster. Her magic is the strongest of the three, her Cures the first to turn to Curagas and her Fires scorching more than one tree to ash.

Still, the Master refused. She gave in only because protesting would mean wasting time she could spend training.

Now, she watches as her boys dance through the forms carved into their muscles, two parts of a whole that aches without her Destiny’s Embrace to complete it. 

They fight bravely, valiantly, even when the exam goes wrong. When they fight against each other, it’s with laughter bright in Sora’s voice and groans seeping through Riku’s teeth like darkness. 

The Master loathes the darkness. He loathes the way Riku falls so easily into its caress, loathes how Riku can smell it on the people in the town when they make the trip down the mountain for groceries, loathes how it licks at Riku’s fingertips whenever he gets especially angry.

Riku has never once smelled darkness on Kairi.

She wonders, sometimes, if that’s why the Master took her in on that day she can no longer remember.

When Riku gives into the inky blackness that swarms up his arms after Sora breaks his block, the newest crowned master shines clear as day. Sora beams as he receives his new title, whoops in delight as Kairi nearly bowls him over with the sheer force of her congratulations slammed against him, but he falters when Riku draws away.

Riku storms off. No one in that room is wise enough to stop him.

* * *

There is mist in Kairi’s bedroom. It’s dewy on her skin as she walks into the white, Destiny’s Embrace fitting into the grooves of her hand like the old friend it is. She raises it slowly, scanning the familiar contours of her room for any other irregularities.

The girl in the mist is here. She sits on Kairi’s bed, back straight and chin high, a stranger in a place she doesn’t belong to. In her lap is the wooden Keyblade Riku gave Kairi when she was still nothing more than a hollow doll of a girl. Her fingers trace the jagged edges of his name.

She wears a white suit that clings to her like a second skin. The material is foreign to Kairi, almost sinewy in the way thick strands crawl over the girl. Pale blue pieces weave their way through the white, blooming out of her chest like veins. There are gaps of the suit missing: on her forearms, just above her knees, the patch underneath her collarbone carved out in the shape of a heart. Condensation clings to the pale skin Kairi can see.

Her face is obscured by a mask. Frosted glass creeps and bends around her jawline, raising up around the back of her head and ending at a level that toes the edge between protective and deadly. The rest of the glass is an opaque white.

Kairi can see her reflection in it: her own red hair, long enough to dust her shoulders now, her wide eyes, her mouth open in a gasp. 

Before Kairi can breathe out, _You’re real_ , the girl speaks. Her voice is hollow. Lifeless. “He’s leaving you behind, Kairi. Shouldn’t you go after him before he goes where you can’t follow?” Hands gloved in white ghost over Riku’s name once more.

Kairi is home, and yet she is lost. “What? Who are you? How did you get here?”

The girl gives what could be a shrug, if she had the energy to complete the gesture. “I’m not important. But Riku…” she gives the Keyblade an experimental swing, as if testing its weight, “...Riku is. He’s precious to you. To Sora, too. How will that bond survive when the weight of the worlds mold him into a different person? Will you even recognize what remains of him?”

Destiny’s Embrace sings through the mist as Kairi swings, burning the mist away with a low level Fire spell bursting from its tips. The girl doesn’t move. “That’s not true! I know him better than anyone else, and he knows me! I’ll always be able to find him!”

She nearly sees red when the girl sets the Keyblade off to the side and takes the pink Wayfinder off Kairi’s nightstand. She left it here for safekeeping, unneeded for an exam she had no part in. It was supposed to be protected here, away from flying Keyblades and stray bolts of magic.

The girl lets the chain fall from the fingers, the glass refracting broken pink sunlight onto Kairi’s armored boots and across her bedroom floor.

“This charm…” the girl says, “...Is it really strong enough to keep you… all of you... together?”

She hears the words the girl doesn’t say just as clearly as the ones she does: _Are you strong enough to keep your bonds intact?_

Kairi lunges forward and snatches the Wayfinder from her grasp. “You’re wrong!” she nearly screams. “Whoever you are, you don’t know us! You don’t know Riku, you don’t know Sora, and you don’t know me! Nothing can tear us apart, and I’ll- I’ll fight anything and anyone who tries!” she drops into a battle stance: knees bent, elbows locked, Keyblade at the ready.

The girl tilts her head up. From behind the opaque glass, Kairi gets the feeling that she’s being watched, sending a chill down her spine. The girl’s hands fold delicately in her lap. “Nothing can tear you apart?” she repeats. “How can you be sure of that when you stay trapped here?”

With that, the mist overtakes Kairi’s vision. The girl fades into the white, disappearing without a trace.

Heart hammering in her throat, Kairi tucks her Wayfinder into her pocket, straps the wooden Keyblade to her back, and runs to find her boys.

* * *

Thus begins the chase along the worlds. Riku leaves pockets of darkness in his wake, spinning more and more out of control with each world he barrels into. He is not evil. Kairi knows that deep in her heart. 

But he is hurting, and he is confused, and no one but Kairi can see the hurt underneath the anger. For that reason, she is more determined than ever to find him. 

The worlds are beautiful. Kairi laughs in ways she never expected. She dances with dwarves. With tiny hands and a mousey new friend, she sews a dress for a girl whose heart shines like her own. She stumbles across a sleeping woman, carefully brushing her hair away from her forehead and admiring the fact that the worlds are kind enough to create a creature as beautiful as her. 

She also hurts in ways she never hoped. The Unversed, creatures the Master had warned her of but ones she had never seen, crawl over the world like beautiful parasites. They come in every shape and size. Some are tiny bells that float through the air and ring in cacophonous symphonies that leave blood dripping down her ears. Others are crystalline cats that faze out of thin air and swipe at her with glittering claws. Then there are the chandeliers that rain glass down on her, and roses that spit shattered thorns at her like gunfire, and so many more.

Most of them are bathed in similar shades as the girl in the mist, colored in whites and light blues. They all share the same drooping blue eyes, always watching her like they’re about to burst into tears. And maybe they would, if they weren’t monsters. 

All of them are ridiculously powerful and yet ridiculously weak. Even the largest Unversed go down with just a few strikes from her Keyblade, but deliver strikes to her that only her strongest Curagas can heal.

She watches one crystalline cat plunge its claws directly into the chest of a fleeing man in the Enchanted Dominion, blood flicking across the dewy grass beneath its feet as it strikes. Kairi weeps for that man and for the light that she saw extinguish before her own eyes.

When her tears are spent, she raises her scabbed knees off the ground, wipes off the dirt clinging to her skirt, and keeps moving.

* * *

Sora finds her in the depths of Maleficent’s dungeon, the witch’s admission still ringing in her ears. She says that Riku stole the sleeping princess’s heart. Kairi doesn’t want to believe it, _can’t_ believe it. 

Yet she knows, deep in her soul, that only a Keyblade wielder could throw someone into a sleep so deep that it borders on death.

“That’s a lie!” Sora’s voice rings out against the green tiles of the dungeon, echoing the truth Kairi wants so desperately to believe. He’s at Kairi’s front in an instant, Kingdom Key serving as a barrier between herself and the witch that glares down at them. “Kairi, don’t believe a thing she says! You _know_ Riku would never do that!”

Maleficent may be battered from her fight with Kairi, her robes ripped along her side and a mottled bruise slowly formed under the green skin under her right eye, but Sora looks ready for a fight.

“Ah, the truth can be so cruel. Even the closest of friends can never know the secrets of another’s heart,” Maleficent laments, speaking as if she was a monarch giving an audience to a crowd of loyal subjects. 

Yet all she has are two children, weapons drawn and eyes fierce, and the three fairies that float anxiously off to the side.

“I’m sure you’ll agree. Kairi… Sora.” With that, a cloud of darkness surrounds her and leaves them with a fear that neither of them are ready to face.

With the witch gone, Sora finally lets his Keyblade disappear in a stream of glittering light. His smile is bright and blinding as he spins to face her. “Kairi! You’re okay!”

Her heart sings at the sight of him, but she cannot deny the minor key the melody drops into as a bittersweet realization settles over her. He did not run to her side. He ran to her front, blocking her from a perceived danger that she had already bested herself.

Still, she is glad to see him. “Sora! What are you doing here?”

“The Master sent me. We gotta get you home, Kairi. It’s not safe out here.”

“But what about Riku? He’s still out there, Sora! Doesn’t he need us?”

Grinning, Sora leans back and folds his arms behind his neck. “Don’t worry. I’m keeping an eye on him! I’ll bring him home soon.”

Not that _they_ will bring him home, but _he_ will.

She has no doubt that Sora would follow Riku to the ends of the worlds without a moment’s hesitation. His love burns like a fire, eager to snatch up the underbrush that stands in his way. 

Sora was the one who taught her what love was. He was the one who held her hand and took her on a tour of the castle, even when her eyes were glassy and too unfocused to see the details he pointed out. He dropped a plate and made it shatter to shards the first time he heard her laugh, scrambling out of the kitchen and shouting for Riku and the Master like Kairi’s short giggle was the most wonderful news he had ever been given. He’s comforting, a flame happy to keep her warm through the cold winter months.

She loves it and she loves him, yet those same flames want to trap her in a ring from which there is no escape. As beautiful as the castle may be, a gilded cage is still a cage.

Besides, the girl’s words ring in Kairi’s ears with heavy certainty. They’re always meant to be together, regardless of what anyone else says. Their connection is meant to be unbreakable.

_(When Sora finally does come home, Riku in tow, he may no longer be the same. They may be a whole without her, thirds turning to halves and leaving her out of a picture they all once found beautiful.)_

Sora reaches out to her. Kairi takes his hands in her own and squeezes. She’d tear the moon out of the sky for him, but not at the sake of her other beloved boy. “I’m sorry, Sora. I can’t go with you. I need to find Riku, too. Before it’s too late.”

She turns on her heels and runs until she can no longer hear his voice, desperately calling her name. She gives herself only a moment to catch her breath and still her tears before slamming her fist against her shoulder plate, hopping on her glider, and taking to the stars.

* * *

The girl drifts in the Lanes Between. She floats through the starlight without a glider, mist enveloping her body and leaving Kairi to wonder if she’s stumbled into a dream instead. The mask tilts to face her until all she can see is the pink armor covering her own face, unseen eyes staring at her in what might be a challenge.

A challenge, or maybe a plea. Kairi cannot tell.

But she needs answers. These worlds are too vast, the Lanes too numerous, for Kairi to find Riku without any leads. The best one she has is in the mist that ghosts over her glider, dewdrop kisses leaving the metal slick under her touch. 

As the girl fades into the white until not a trace of her remains, Kairi gets a sense of where to go. A picture forms in her mind, colors birthing itself like watercolors bleeding over a blank canvas.

She sees desert spires, windswept dunes, and a stain of white against the brown.

Kairi tilts her body until her glider veers sharply to the left and follows a trail meant solely for her heart.

* * *

The air in this new world carries a scorching heat on its wind. It whips Kairi’s hair into her face and sets her shoulder plate ablaze. She, like her boys, only wear portions of their armor with their regular clothing. Just enough to create a connection potent enough for the remainder of her suit to come at her call.

Sora wears his chest plate like an undershirt, red and chocolate brown hidden underneath a red jacket. Riku’s yellow and silver armor trails along his right arm. Kairi wears a little more than her boys. Her pink shoulder plate. Black gauntlets that stop at her elbows and glitter under this desert sun, saving her hands from years of blisters her boys endured before they donned gloves. Pink shoes, metal sloping over her toes and sweeping over reinforced black fabric to metallic pink knee pads.

It makes her feel secure, most days. Here, all it carries is the threat of scorching her sensitive skin until nothing but red remains.

There is no mist here. Even if the girl summoned it, the sun hangs low and intense in the sky. It would be burned to nothing instantly. They are alone, surrounded only by howling wind and rocky spires that loom over them both. 

The sweet days she once spent with Sora and Riku sitting in a circle on the floor of her bedroom tossing pieces of their armor to each other to try on feel so far away now. Those memories are what turned the Land of Departure into not a stop in her life but a stay; they’re what she chases after now. Once she finds Riku, then nothing will have to change. They can go home. They can stay together, not one of them left behind or forgotten.

She’s had a chance, however brief, to see the worlds. Now, what claws at her is the fear of her most precious people being torn from her hands.

The girl in front of her, in the sinewy white and blue suit that wraps around her skin like vines, holds the key Kairi longs for.

“What did you mean before? Where is Riku going? Who is he becoming?” Kairi demands. Then, with her eyes narrowed in a challenge and her muscles taut with tension, “How do you know this?”

“He’s following the path he’s meant to take. You’re following yours, too,” the girl says. She drifts towards Kairi more than she walks, moving as if pulled forward by an invisible thread. She stands out against this desert wasteland, reminding Kairi of the bleach stains she used to leave on her clothes back when the Master first taught her hollow shell how to do her own laundry so Riku would no longer have to. She is mismatched to this broken place.

Kairi resists the urge to reach towards her. The closer the girl comes, the stronger the pull. She does not understand why.

Kairi wonders if she feels it, too. Maybe she could tell if she could see the eyes behind that white mask. Instead, all she sees are her own, narrowed in defiance.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kairi says. The girl stops a few feet away, slightly out of the reach of Destiny’s Embrace were she to summon it to her hand. Close enough to fight, but not to be struck down. 

She is not surprised when a Keyblade materializes in the girl’s hand. “It wouldn’t change if you know. Not anymore,” she responds. Her voice sounds empty, resigned to the inevitable fight the summoning of her weapon signals. 

The girl’s Keyblade - but how does she have one, Kairi wonders - is the most beautiful thing Kairi has ever seen. Its teeth are made of the shards of a golden star, splintered from twisting white metal that curls around itself as it stretches down to the hilt. Frosted glass, the same eerie pale blue as the glass that curves around the girl’s jaw, surrounds her hand in a broken circle. A lone eye stares balefully at Kairi, through her skin and into the depth of her heart. She suppresses a shudder.

The Keyblade is simple, beautiful, and yet it is deadly.

Not a plea. A challenge, then.

Kairi flings her hand out, her own Keyblade eager to protect its master. _Empty Canvas_ , it sings in her mind, in the same cadence it sings of Sora’s _Kingdom Key_ and Riku’s _Way to the Dawn_. Keyblades do not discriminate between light and darkness, good and evil. They do not see enemies. All they see is the heart worthy of wielding their might and the brethren that take shape alongside them. 

“This is the only way,” the girl says, maddeningly vague. Kairi feels as if she’s been trapped in a conversation that she’s missed half of, important snippets burned away by the blistering wind that whips her hair into her face. She grits her teeth and Destiny’s Embrace blocks the hit that follows those words.

This girls fights on the edge of desperation. Kairi feels it in her every movement, the way she throws herself into battle like she has nothing to lose. She flings her Keyblade against Kairi’s, the clang of metal ringing in Kairi’s ears and making her grit her teeth. Every swipe Kairi aims at her, she dodges. Spells, techniques, even her command styles do nothing to help her. 

The battle is swift. Swifter than it should be. 

It is over the moment mist clouds the girl’s form. The sun burns the white away within seconds, but the girl is nowhere to be seen. Kairi freezes, whipping around to see where her opponent went.

She does not look up. Her gravest mistake.

The girl slams her Keyblade directly into Kairi’s uncovered shoulder, slamming her whole body into the ground. Her enemy backflips away with all the grace of a dancer, her weapon held over her head in preparation for a final strike. 

But then Empty Canvas fades to nothing. When the girl speaks, her voice is watery. “You need to be stronger than this,” she implores. Not quite emotional, but something close enough to be mistaken for it. “I shouldn’t be able to beat you."

“Who said you beat me?” Kairi bites out, shoving Destiny’s Embrace into the hard ground below and using it as a crutch to stand on. She gets to her knees before collapsing again, her strength left to bleed out over this arid wasteland.

Something about this feels familiar. If she wasn’t weak from exhaustion and pain, maybe she would ruminate on that more. 

“You’ll never catch up to Riku if you remain like this,” the girl says. Kairi wants to scream, the meaning of those words lost to her. She has to get up. She has to heal herself, prove this girl wrong, but she can’t.

Before Kairi can bite back a sob, a light brighter than anything she’s ever seen flashes before her eyes. 

* * *

Mickey is a Keyblade Wielder, too. His face is kind and his words are kinder, but the vicious strikes he directs towards the masked girl betray the years of training he must have. He is not a Keyblade Master, not yet, but he is close. That much, Kairi can tell.

He heals Kairi’s wounds and fights by her side, By the end of it all, when the girl is gone and only they remain, he feels like a friend. She doesn’t need to know anything other than his name to trust him, not when the light pouring off him contains such a gentle warmth. 

He pulls out his own lucky charm, the one that brought them together, and shows it to her happily. She shows him her Wayfinder in exchange. He marvels over the design, over the love he can so clearly feel pressed into every edge.

She goes to touch the Star Shard, curious as to whether or not it’ll be as soft as it looks, when another light blinds her. The next thing she knows, she’s hovering on the outskirts of a new world. Her armor clings to her like a second skin, her visor tinting her surroundings a muted shade of pink.

Mickey mentioned that he believes in fate, shown to him through the places his Star Shard takes him. She is utterly alone out here, but still, she can almost hear his voice insisting that it brought her to this world for a reason. 

As much as she would have preferred finding this world on her own, she thinks of the magic still layered over her own Wayfinder. That’s reason enough.

She goes in.

Kairi walks through the glittering streets and lingers by fountains that mist her face with cool water. Beautiful spires hang high over her head, illuminated by lights that fill her with the warmth of a well-loved home. For as dearly as she loves the Land of Departure, even the tranquility of a world in perfect balance cannot compare to the paradise that is Radiant Garden.

Against her best hopes, even paradise can find monsters lurking in the shadows. Kairi cuts down the Unversed with ease, their crystalline bodies fading to dust beneath her magic and the strikes of her weapon. 

* * *

Kairi finds a little boy, no more than four years old, running through a field filled with flowers in every shade of the color spectrum. He swirls like a spring breeze through them, tiny hands clasping around the grasshoppers that try to flee as he approaches. She watches as he brings his hands close to his face, giggles once more, and sets them free.

She’s seen dozens of children since stepping foot in this world. None of them have made her stop the way this one does, simply watching him play without the terrifying weight of potential loss crushing him down. She’s never seen him before - how could she, when she’s spent the entirety of his life confined to an entirely different world? Still, there’s something about him that seems familiar. Comforting.

She’s not sure how to describe this feeling, but she likes to think it’d be similar to the warm relief of coming home to family. She does not have one of flesh and blood to call her own, not one that she remembers.

There is Sora, and Riku, and the Master. They are enough to fill her heart with the warmth of love.

Kairi closes her eyes and reaches for this boy’s heart, trying to discern why she feels this connection to him. He looks too vastly different to be related to her, not with the oval shape of his face and the golden spikes that dust the top of his head, but there must be some explanation. Maybe he’s also a being of pure light, like the women she met in the previous worlds were. They held a similar feeling of kinship.

His light is bright, shining with an intensity that feels like- like _home_ , she realizes. But there is darkness too, partitioned off from the rest of his heart by an invisible barrier. Her eyes flutter open, confusion racing through her mind. This boy is special. Incredibly so.

When a thick blanket of mist envelops him and leave behind a pack of wolves with cold blue eyes and sharp glassy claws, Kairi is ready. “Go!” she shouts, Destiny’s Embrace singing as she summons it to her hand. “You need to hide! I’ll keep you safe!”

The boy looks at the creatures with fear, but he calms when he meets Kairi’s eyes. With a nod, he scurries off. Kairi makes quick work of the wolves. They tear apart the flower beds with vicious abandon, but Kairi is just as vicious with her fire spells and her newest command style that lets her disappear into columns of blazing light. 

When the last wolf falls, the boy comes running over to her. “You saved me!” he cheers. Grinning, Kairi kneels in front of him and gladly accepts the delicate pink flowers he offers her. They’re beautiful, sparkling in the sunlight despite their smashed petals. 

“I’m Kairi. What’s your name?” she asks, laughing as the boy takes one of the flowers from her hands and tucks it behind her ear. 

“Ventus! But my grandma calls me Ven. You can call me Ven, too!”

“Okay, Ven. Nice to meet you.” All she knows is that the boy is special, and that he’s familiar, and that she would do anything to keep him safe. She still has to find Riku, so she cannot keep protecting this boy when danger finds him once more. What she can do is give him a charm.

A small black and white band clings to his wrist. She taps her fingers against the fabric band, feeling the magic drain from her fingertips and imbue the black and white with a soft glow. Ven stares at it in wonder, his wide eyes drifting from himself to her. “Did you do more magic?” he asks.

“You’re smart, Ven! I did. There are a lot of monsters around here, but you don’t need to be scared. I gave you a magic spell to keep you safe. Next time you’re in danger, this spell will take you to other people to protect you, okay?” 

Ven smiles, unguarded in the way children who know what it is to be loved are. “Okay! Thank you, Kairi!” 

His grandmother arrives not much later and takes him away by the hand, dazzling him with stories from the age of fairy tales, stars and light and love. 

It aches a little, to see him go, but she can’t figure out why.

* * *

Her boys are here. 

Just the sight of Riku’s back fills her with joy, her heart yearning to be at his side once more. Sora appears a moment later, breathless and blazing with his own sunny joy. For a moment, everything is as it used to be.

Until a large Unversed, the largest she’s seen, swells out of a sudden mist. The monster is made solely of whites and blues, save for the long plumage of blood red feathers that trails out of the top of its helmet and down its torso. She’s taken to naming the Unversed she encounters in each world. Easier to identify them that way. The name for this one comes to her instantly: Trinity Knight.

It raises a quartz saber. Their expressions reflect on the blade, broken apart to a hundred splinters. 

She sees determination in Sora’s eyes and anger in Riku’s bared teeth. She does not need to see her face to feel her own heavy heartbreak. Things can never be easy for them, can they?

At least their journeys, separate as they may have been thus far, have done nothing to splinter the whole they make as they fight together. As Riku darts for a leg made of frosted steel, Sora swings himself around a light-pole of his own making and brings Kingdom Key down on a chilled gauntlet. Kairi weaves between the two of them, casting a Fire-turned-Fira spell directly at its torso. 

This one, for as hard as it tries to protect itself, falls far too easily to their strikes.

After a few short minutes, the Trinity Knight can raise its blade no more. One final, coordinated strike is enough to end its terror.

The Unversed fades away, leaving behind nothing but the cobblestone its sword rendered to broken chunks beneath their feet. Kairi is careful to keep her balance even as she hops from foot to foot. Her boys will worry if she stumbles, and even if they do not mean it, she cannot let their concern become shackles on her wrists.

She wants to be here with them. One misstep is all it’ll take for their desire to protect her to overpower her.

“We make a good team,” Kairi says, offering them her sunniest grin. The same one that used to break down Riku’s walls enough to sneak her an extra piece of meat onto her plate at dinner and the same one that used to help Sora nap easy during the midday breaks they once shared together.

“Sure do!” Sora chimes at the same time that Riku says, “That was easier than I expected.” They - all three of them - exchange glances and laugh. 

For a moment, everything is as it should be. As it once was.

“Oh, yeah!” Sora says, digging into one of the many pockets in his shorts. He blinks, laughs, and digs his hand into a different pocket. It takes four tries before he pulls out a trio of shiny passes. “I got these tickets for you guys. They’re lifetime passes to Disney Town! The guy said to take two grownups, but you’re both older than me so I’m pretty sure that counts.”

Riku takes one and holds it up to the sunlight, squinting. “Disney Town?” he echoes.

“Yeah, I don’t really know where that is. But hey, it sounds fun!”

“It does,” Kairi agrees, taking one for herself. She can feel his love in it. His warmth puts her at ease. It always has. “Let’s all go together!”

All it takes is one shared look between Sora and Riku to wall Kairi out once more. They’re close enough for her to take their hands in her own, but she cannot move closer. She wants nothing more than for them to be _together_ , all three of them. Why does this have to be so difficult?

“Kairi, let Sora take you home. It’s not safe for you out here,” Riku says.

Kairi ignores the sting of pain that curls through her, tempering it down with that same smile as before. She hopes with all her heart that they can’t tell the way it pulls at her cheeks, forced there by the slightest sheen of desperation. It’s fine. It has to be. “Don’t worry, Riku! I made it this far, didn’t I?”

“Kairi…” Sora starts, reaching out to her in an aborted attempt to - what, exactly? She isn’t sure.

“Sora, I’m fine! I even found that girl in the mist. You know,” she adds, teasingly, “The one that you two always told me wasn’t real? She is real, and kind of weird, but she won’t be bothering any of us anymore.”

Riku dives at her. His hands squeeze her shoulders so tightly that it almost hurts. “You saw her? The girl in the mist? The masked one in white, right?” At Kairi’s small nod, he pushes himself away. “Naminé...” he mutters darkly.

Naminé. Kairi doesn’t dare speak it, not under the intense scrutiny of Riku’s gaze, but she lets it linger in her mouth. It makes her ache deep in her heart, a hollow pain that she doesn’t understand at all. 

The girl in the mist is real, and she is dangerous, and she has a name. There is a story behind her actions, behind the conviction she has that Riku is destined to leave and the desperation _(because that’s what it is, isn’t it?)_ behind her strikes. 

She wants to make sure Naminé can never come near her friends. At the same time, Kairi can hear her voice in her mind. There’s a mournful elegy hidden behind her vague words, slipping out in the breaths of almost-emotion she hears.

Kairi can’t help but feel sympathy for her. She’s never been like the Master - never been able to take a stand against darkness the way he’s always wanted her to. Not when it means letting someone who doesn’t deserve to hurt suffer.

“Kairi.” Her name sounds like a knife on Riku’s tongue. “Let Sora take you home. If you see that girl again, tell the Master. Don’t go near her.”

Those words plunge into her chest, sharper than the hollow ache that Naminé left behind. She’s reminded of the little boy she protected just hours before - is that what Riku sees when he looks at her? Is she nothing more than a child to be cared for? 

She’s only a year younger. Maybe less than that, even. “I can protect myself, Riku,” she pleads. “I’ve gotten this far on my own, haven’t I? I can come with you wherever you need to go! I won’t drag you down, promise!”

She hopes, desperately, that he can’t hear the unspoken words lurking in her heart. 

“No.” Riku’s voice is a stone wall, keeping her blocked out once more. “I’m dealing with the darkness in a different way. My own way. I have to do this alone.”

Kairi takes a step back, stunned. Naminé’s words echo in her mind, each reverberation building an additional pressure behind her eyes. She cannot cry here. She cannot let him see that weakness. She has to prove that she’s strong. 

Darkness or not, danger or not, she can’t let him go alone.

Sora does not feel the same. He peers at Riku. “That’s stupid! The Master didn’t tell you to do that! He didn’t even tell you to leave! You should go home too, Riku.”

She’ll gladly give up seeing other worlds, at least for a little bit, if it means getting to go home with her boys. She can pretend it’s not a cage, that they’re free to go and she isn’t, if they stay at her side. 

Kairi nods eagerly, hoping that Riku’s carefully crafted shell will splinter. 

It doesn’t.

“Does _Master Sora_ want me to step aside so he can go play hero in all the worlds?” Riku jeers, animosity drenching his words in poison.

Sora scowls at him. “What are you talking about? Every world I went to - I went to them looking for you and Kairi!”

Riku rolls his eyes. There’s a line of tension running through his body that shouldn’t be there. Not when it’s only the three of them. “I get it,” he says. She can’t smell darkness clinging to someone’s skin the way he can, but she can sense the way it roars within the edges of his being all the same. “The Master doesn’t trust me. He never has. Even a blockhead like you can’t deny it.” Way to the Dawn shimmers to life in his hand and he falls into his fighting stance.

Kairi doesn’t move, seeing the test for exactly what it is, but Sora flinches.

Riku tries to keep his face unreadable, but Kairi sees his broken heart reflected in his eyes. His laugh is bitter. Too bitter. “I thought so.” Riku turns away from both of them. “No wonder you’re his favorite.”

“Riku-” Kairi starts, but before she can so much as take a step towards him, he shouts.

“Go _home_ , Kairi!” His words freeze her in place, ice creeping under her skin. She watches, painfully unable to chase after him, as he leaves. 

Sora isn’t as frozen, but he doesn’t chase after Riku. All he does is reach out with his hand, his words lagging behind. “Riku, come on! It doesn’t have to be like this!”

_But it must,_ Kairi’s mind supplies, cloaked in Naminé’s voice. Kairi grits her teeth, her body finally obeying her commands only after Riku disappears into the distance. She pulls away from Sora’s grasp as it is redirected towards her.

Her heart hurts for Riku. He understands her better than Sora, in many ways. The pins and needles that cling to her skin cling to his as well. 

“He’s stubborn,” Sora laughs weakly, cheer forcibly injected into his voice. Trying to be strong for Kairi’s sake, just as he always has. “Don’t you worry, Kairi. I’ll get him home, too.”

Something else occurs to her in that moment - the truths lurking just below the surface. She tries to beckon them forward, hoping that her question is enough. “But… why is it so important that we go home now? And what about you, Sora? Would you stay home if we did?”

Sora goes to speak, but he can’t meet her eyes. It’s all the answer she needs.

“I have to go find him,” she says gently. “I know you’re a Keyblade Master now, but we can fight, too. We’ve always been able to. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond before chasing after Riku. Her heart wouldn’t be able to take his sadness.

* * *

Kairi searches all of Radiant Garden for any trace of Riku. The questions she asks the residents of this world turn into brief flickers of friendship, aborted conversations that tug at her heart as she leaves them behind. As badly as she wants to form these new bonds, she has to keep one of her most precious bonds from fraying any further than she fears it has. 

She saves another young boy along the way, one much older and colored by sorrow than Ven was. He stares unflinchingly at the Unversed that surround him. She thinks they’re the most common kind of Unversed, these crystalline cats that prowl around this little boy like he’s a cornered mouse. Their claws glitter in the sunlight, refracting every color in the spectrum across the beautiful cobblestone beneath their feet. 

She’s taken to calling them Crystal Claws. 

Kairi makes quick work of them. Destiny’s Embrace is eager to keep their translucent bodies from taking on the red, red tint of human blood.

The little boy does not thank her once the last of the Unversed fall. All he does is stare at her. In his eyes is a deep sorrow, one that is far too heavy for such a young heart to carry.

An older man, clad in the same white jacket as the young boy, finds him quickly after. The man, too gaunt to be related to the boy by blood, explains his situation. “Ienzo lost his parents quite recently, you see. Not long after those _creatures_ began to plague this world. Myself and my fellow researchers at the castle have taken him in as a result,” he says.

That makes sense. Why would this boy be afraid of these monsters when they’ve already taken so much from him? 

Kairi gets to her knees and grips his small hands in her own. She knows he is mute, his words stolen away by the Unversed the moment they stole away his family, but she knows he can understand what she says without a problem. She doesn’t need a reply, not for this. 

She looks him in the eyes, careful to tuck the long strands of hair that cover half of his face behind his ear, and she says, “If I had come here sooner, your parents… I could have saved them. I’m so sorry.”

The man, still standing over them both, snorts. “Don’t be foolish, miss. You clearly have no control over these monsters, nor do you have any control over their actions. Just because you are a solution to the problem doesn’t mean you’re also the cause. There’s no point in blaming yourself.” His words, for as much as they make her wince, turn a little kinder. “I have a hunch that we’ll cross paths again one day. I hope that when we do, you’ll remember what I’ve said.”

He takes Ienzo by the hand and guides him home as Kairi gets back to her feet, his words ringing in her head. She wants to scream her frustrations at her own powerlessness, but she can’t deny that there is some truth there. It’s her duty to fight anything that threatens the balance between worlds, just as it’s her duty to protect the innocent. She can’t blame herself for their existence.

All it does is strengthen her conviction. She must keep moving, keep fighting, keep looking for Riku. For his sake, for her own, and for all the innocents she would never be able to protect by going home.

* * *

When Kairi finally finds Riku, the sun hangs low in Radiant Garden’s sky, hidden behind the tall buildings that Riku has somehow managed to tuck himself between. Even at home, he prefers to slink through side corridors instead of taking the main halls as Kairi and Sora do. The exception only comes in his races with Sora, countless trials conducted by sprinting across sleek wood floors in an attempt to win. 

Kairi often plays scorekeeper for them, their wins and losses burned into her memory. Currently, Sora has two wins over Riku.

That knowledge feels heavier than it should.

Kairi refuses to let it weigh her down as she slips into the alley, her footsteps made into loud claps as she steps through small puddles of water. “Riku!” she calls out. “I’ve been looking for you.”

He’s always been easy for her to read. His relief at seeing her and his frustration at her deliberate disobeying of his earlier words war on his face. His relief winning out is a sweet victory. His soft smile melts away the remaining tension in the air. “You, looking for me? That’s a first.”

Kairi pouts. “That’s not true. I’m always keeping an eye out for you,” she says, trying to giggle but only getting part of the way there. Sora has always been loud and easy to find, even if his presence sometimes comes in nothing more than a rush of air as he darts past her.

Riku lingers in places that the others don’t. Kairi’s explored every inch of their castle, found secrets that she’s certain she shouldn’t know, but she only began after losing Riku one too many times. At this point, she probably knows it better than he does. Just as thoroughly as the Master himself.

_(None of them know. She cannot bring herself to tell them. Somehow, that makes her think of the girl in the mist, and of eyes she's starting to suspect must be somber staring at her balefully.)_

Taking a gamble, Kairi casts her dice and steps closer. Riku’s smile fades to something softer as he ruffles her hair. She bats his hand away with a giggle, though she keeps the warmth in her heart close. “So, where are you heading now, huh?” she asks, teasing and light.

He catches her trick easily; he’s too smart not to. That same line has worked on Sora countless times, enabling Kairi to sneak into trainings that would leave the Master to make her scrub the floors of the castle for a week straight if he discovered she sat in on them, but Riku knows what her intention is. Usually, he’d let it slip with a smirk and a finger pressed to his lips, a secret the three of them are destined to share.

He doesn’t give her permission. Not this time. “Can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know you’d follow.” Her broken heart, reduced to splinters in her chest, must be visible on her face. His voice softens, the same way it always has whenever he speaks to her. “This isn’t because I don’t think you’re strong enough. Your heart is probably stronger than mine and Sora’s combined,” he adds with a slight chuckle.

“Then why won’t you let me come with you?” Kairi pleads, reaching for his hand. He lets her take it, though his warm skin stands as a sharp contrast to the icy darkness that lashes within his veins. She can sense it better now - is it stronger than before, or have her senses grown sharper from her travels?

She hopes it’s the second, but her recoiling light whispers to her that it’s the first.

Still, she refuses to let go. No.

She holds on tighter. 

“Sora’s right when he says it isn’t safe for you out here,” Riku says, and she hears the tang of bitterness in his voice when he says Sora’s name, just as she feels the darkness spike under his skin at the mention. “But not because of the reason he thinks it is.”

“I can handle the Unversed just fine,” Kairi says.

Riku nods. “It’s not the Unversed I’m worried about. It’s _her_ ,” he says, spitting out the single word like venom. All at once, Kairi understands.

The masked girl. 

Naminé.

Riku hesitates, lips parting to share something that he clearly is unsure of. His hand drifts into his pocket and she spots a flash of yellow metal glittering in the sunlight. He still has his Wayfinder. 

“You can tell me,” Kairi says gently. “We’ll always be together, remember? Nothing will ever change that.”

“...Master Xehanort told me she came from you, Kairi,” Riku says softly. “She was part of you, once. But something happened - a training accident, I think - and Master Xehanort had to pull her out of you so you could survive. She isn’t made of darkness. She’s nothing. Just an empty husk, obsessed with destroying anything and everything that isn’t as empty as her. She’s obsessed with you, too. That’s why you used to see her.” He sighs. “I should have believed you then.” He squeezes her hand, in a silent apology for something that he could have never had any control over. 

“She came from me?” Kairi repeats, struggling to comprehend how something like this could even happen. Her head spins with the revelation. There’s so much to grasp there, too much for her to handle now. 

“Which is why you have to go back. The Unversed are strong, but if Naminé can control them? Then she’s stronger than we think. She can’t hurt you with the Master there. No one can.”

Kairi wants to protest - somehow, someway - but the memories of her last fight with Naminé rise in her mind, unbidden and unwelcome. Kairi wouldn’t have been able to beat her alone. They both knew it.

Naminé could have destroyed her then, but she didn’t. If what Riku was told is true, then why didn’t she?

Kairi can’t let the thought go.

“I should get going,” Riku says, “Before her trail goes cold.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Kairi murmurs, a weak defense for a battle she knows she’s lost. “We’re not supposed to be apart.” He hasn’t changed, not in the way she was so fearful of, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stay the same. He’s strong enough to control his darkness, not to let it control him. 

But there’s more than darkness at play here, isn’t there?

Riku smiles at her once more, but it doesn’t warm her the way it should. “Hey, don’t make that face,” he teases. “That’s why you made us all Wayfinders, right?”

“So we’ll always find our way back to each other,” Kairi finishes for him. “No matter what.”

“Exactly.” Riku ruffles her hair once more. “It might take a little while, but we will. That’ll never change.”

He leaves then, disappearing in the Lanes Between as Kairi grapples with her thoughts and the shaking revelation that he’s left her with.

In the distance, a boy clad in red armor disappears into the sky seconds after Riku does. 

She barely notices.

* * *

Kairi was hollow for so long. She barely remembers the first two years of her apprenticeship under the Master, lost in a haze that she finally understands was born from a heart torn asunder. Sora and Riku both say that there used to be no light in her eyes. There were times when they marveled that she could even move on her own.

Still, she trained. What else was there to do? Even if her mind could barely form coherent thought, it took almost no time at all for her body to start moving once more.

She does remember a few of the spars Sora and Riku would guide her through back before Destiny’s Embrace answered her call. She used Sora’s battered old toy sword, pitted time and time against Riku and the wooden Keyblade he carved himself. 

She’s never had Riku’s raw strength, and maybe she never will, but the difference between their skill levels was especially egregious in those days. Regardless of Sora’s cheers, she never won a single match.

They tried to comfort her after her loss. There was a time when Riku, chest puffed out in false pride, bestowed her his wooden Keyblade in a mock ceremony that left Sora howling with laughter and Kairi with the first smile she ever remembers wearing.

She swings that Keyblade now, hoping in vain for its listless strikes to bring comfort to her. The weapon is a crude, blocky thing, looking much closer to Kingdom Key than it does Way to the Dawn. A replica of Sora’s Keyblade was probably easier to make.

Or, Kairi considers with a tiny smile, Riku may have originally made it for Sora only to back out at the last moment. That’s just as likely. 

He made it long before Kairi came to live with them. Back when…

Back when she and Naminé… were the same person?

She goes to swing the Keyblade, but her grip falters and it flies out of her grasp. Before she can get to her feet, a boy leans down and picks it up.

He’s about her age, maybe a little older. His hair is red, a little like her own, but brighter, a crown of flames given form. Another boy, the ice to his fire, stands a few feet away. He looks exasperated.

“This yours?” the red-haired boy asks, grinning. He lifts the Keyblade like it’s nothing.

“Lea,” says the other boy, “we don’t have time for this.” His voice is sharp, quick, short. Older than his face - and his friend - suggests.

“Lighten up, Isa. It’ll only take a sec.” Lea flashes that same grin back to Isa. They must be incredibly close, given the line of tension that drains out of Isa’s shoulders at the sight. It isn’t enough to make him smile in turn, but it’s enough to quell his protests.

Lea strolls over to Kairi, flipping the wooden Keyblade in his hand like it belongs there. “You still play with toy swords? That’s cute.” He turns the Keyblade around to examine it further, unintentionally presenting Kairi with the handle. She scowls and snatches it out of his hand before he can do anything to it.

“It was a gift,” Kairi says stiffly. 

“Now _these_ right here,” Lea says, pausing just long enough to bring out two weapons. She’s not certain what they’re supposed to be. Wheels? Shields? “Ta-daaa! Whaddya think?”

“Are those flame-print trash can lids?” Kairi asks, treading the line between a rude joke and sincerity. She really doesn’t have an idea what they are. She hears an amused snort escape Isa as Lea squawks in offense.

“What!? No way! They’re awesome! You’re just jealous.” He leans towards her and taps his forehead. “I’m Lea. Got it memorized?”

Kairi raises an eyebrow. “Yes?” she asks.

“This is the part where you tell me your name.”

This boy is truly like a flame, catching everything up in his sparks. Despite what happened with Riku just a few hours earlier, Kairi finds herself laughing. The maelstrom of thoughts that have consumed her since Riku left have died down enough to focus on this strange boy. “I’m Kairi,” she says.

“Okay, Kairi. Let’s fight. You and me. Right here, right now.”

“Lea,” Isa warns from behind him, but Lea pays him no mind. 

Kairi shrinks back against the fountain she leans against, thoughts of Naminé filling her mind. Naminé had said she was supposed to be stronger, right? And Sora - Sora still doesn’t think she’s strong enough to protect herself, does he? Time and time again, he rushes to protect her. Like she can’t care for herself. 

Like she’ll never be able to keep up with them.

Kairi gets to her feet. “What are you gonna do, beat me up with your trash can lids?” Kairi says, grinning at him as she falls into her fighting stance. The wooden Keyblade isn’t Destiny’s Embrace, its weight uneven in her hands and its body too wide, but it’ll do.

She can still take down this guy without an issue.

“I’ll beat you up with my _awesome weapons_ , thanks!” Lea taunts, spinning the weapons in both hands, the endlessly turning wheels. 

“You’re gonna be sorry when I knock you on your butt!” Kairi says, caught in his wild grin. They could be friends, she thinks as they rush towards each other. Isa’s chuckle brackets the sounds of their weapons meeting.

Kairi makes quick work of Lea. He fights with confidence, but he has little technique. It’s incredibly easy to throw him off his balance without Kairi even breaking a sweat. His weapons, whatever they are, go flying out of his hands. One lands at Isa’s feet, though he takes a step back from it as it tries to stop against the toe of his shoes. 

“That was a lucky hit,” Lea says, panting as he gets to his feet. “Best two out of three.”

Kairi wins all three, the confidence boost from winning a necessarily salve to her confused heart. 

“I-I’m willing to call it a draw if you are,” Lea says, scrambling to his feet once more. Kairi goes to speak, but as Isa finally approaches the two she’s content to let him speak instead.

“Really? From where I stood, the only thing you drew was a big L on your forehead,” Isa says, stopping by Lea’s crouched form. “For loser, lousy, laughable…”

“Don’t you mean loud, lucrative, and lovable?” Lea counters, offering Isa that sunny grin once more. 

Isa smirks and taps at Lea with his foot. “No.”

Lea hangs his head. His voice is flat when he speaks. “Always giving me grief, Isa.”

“If I don’t, then who will?”

Lea flops against the ground and groans. “The world.”

Lea, Isa, and Kairi all laugh. The sound ignites a feeling within her, something light and airy that reminds her of her earlier travels. Of meeting Cinderella and Jaq, of seeing the Dwarven Woodlands for the first time, of so many beautiful things that she had never experienced before. 

She treasures the friends that she’s made. She treasures these new boys, too. 

“Lea,” Isa says, tapping Lea in his ribs with his shoe once more. “It’s time to go. You promised we would, remember?”

“Okay, okay,” Lea says, getting to his feet. Isa nods to Kairi before turning to leave, but Lea lingers for a moment longer. “And you! Kairi. We’re pals now, so don’t act like I won’t be seeing you again.” He points at her, as if challenging her to disagree.

She doesn’t. Why would she? Instead, she giggles. “Got it, Lea. See you around.”

Isa murmurs something to Lea as he rejoins his friend’s side. Whatever it is, it prompts Lea to laugh and shove him. She doesn’t miss the way they drift back towards each other, just as she doesn’t miss the way their hands intertwine. 

What she does is look away politely. 

She thinks of the boys she loves so dearly and something deep in her chest twists unpleasantly. “It must be nice,” she says to herself, “staying with the people you care about.”

Riku and Sora both want her to go to the Land of Departure. They just want her to be okay, that’s all. She knows it comes from a good place.

But for as much as she wants them to be happy, she can’t linger there when there is work to be done. There are Unversed to fight. People to protect.

And there’s Naminé. If she controls the Unversed, then she has to be stopped. Whatever the cost.

_(And maybe, just maybe, Kairi wants to find out whether that girl is as much of a monster as the beings she creates. As much as Kairi wants to deny it, there’s a part of her that desperately hopes that isn’t true._

_She doesn’t know why that voice still exists.)_

She has to find out the truth. 

She dons her armor, hops on her glider, and takes to the Lanes Between.


	2. Chapter 2

The worlds that Kairi visits are just as strangely beautiful as their predecessors. Olympus Coliseum is full of life and raucous energy, though the crowds that stream into the ornate building to watch fighters morph into heroes attract endless hordes of Unversed. Kairi befriends two boys as she takes the monsters down, each as young and as scrappy as she feels. They aren’t _her_ boys, but she leaves the world with their names on her lips and their friendship setting her heart in a warm glow. They also leave with a promise: to meet each other again, when she is a Master and they are heroes.

The pass to Disney Town that Sora gave her is just that - a pass, words scrawled on a sheet of glossy paper, nothing more - but it burns her heart whenever she touches it. She came here hoping that she wouldn’t see Sora, but the gap where he isn’t hurts more than she wishes it would. She only stays because a white mist settles around her the moment her feet touch the ground. She finds a people eager to support their queen, and a queen eager to support her people, but she does not find the girl in the mist.

The girl that is her missing piece. That’s right.

Traces of Riku exist in another world, one that travels in a spaceship across the Lanes Between. A little alien holds a crudely-made Wayfinder out to Kairi. She holds her own to him. Despite the gap between their languages, the smile they share is one and the same. She helps this misunderstood thing find his freedom, glad to see him escape to the stars. 

She swears she feels eyes on her back the entire time, though she does not know who they belong to. She isn’t sure she wants to know.

* * *

In Neverland, she does not find any answers. All she finds are Unversed, a silly hunt for treasure, and the Star Shard that Mickey once held.

Kairi leaves behind Riku’s Keyblade in the empty treasure chest. As she does, she holds her Wayfinder tight. She doesn’t need that piece of him anymore. Not when she has this unbreakable connection. 

It becomes a trade, as a tiny pixie carries over the Star Shard to add to the chest. Kairi recognizes that keepsake; it isn’t hers, but Mickey’s.

Kairi takes it, despite Tinkerbell’s initial protests. The Star Shard does exactly what she should have expected it to - it wraps Kairi in its light and spirits her away to an entirely new world.

When the light fades and Kairi can see once more, she is greeted with a view of a giant castle. Two figures sit in front of her. All it takes is one utterance of Mickey’s name - who is a king, and not only a king, but the king they swear fealty to - to win their trust.

They lead Kairi inside. Within minutes, she stands at attention in front of a man who brims with more power than she’s ever seen before. Every fiber of his being thrums with it. His heart is ancient, and while his light is unconcentrated, it is more powerful than anything else she has ever encountered.

His name is Yen Sid, and he is a Master that goes beyond even her own. 

Kairi did not realize that was even a possibility.

“I’m Kairi. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Master Yen Sid,” Kairi says, summoning the etiquette training she’s never used before. Yen Sid tilts his head back at her, both acknowledgement and approval of her own choice. She has to push her grin to the recesses of her mind, careful to keep that excitement stored away for when she isn’t watched by a man who she already knows she wants to emulate.

“Ah, yes. Eraqus has told me much about you, Kairi. An eager apprentice of the Keyblade _and_ a Princess of Heart… truly, an unusual combination.”

That shocks a laugh out of Kairi. A _princess_ , her? She’s seen princesses. She’s seen their selflessness, their warmth, the way their light shines so brightly that it makes the world they call home that much brighter. Kairi knows she’s kind, but she isn’t that. 

What kind of princess has another half who creates _monsters?_ That’s no princess. 

Only a witch.

“With all due respect, Master, I’m no princess.”

“Royal blood is not needed for a Princess of Heart. All that’s required of you is a heart of pure light. I expect this does not come as a surprise to you.”

“The heart thing? Not really, no…” Riku had told her as much, just not in so many words. At least she finally understands the kinship she shared with the bright lights she met.

_(Then what of that young boy, Ven? The one with the partitioned heart? Why did she feel the same kinship when darkness so clearly lived within him? She looks at Yen Sid and something tells her that he does not hold that answer, either.)_

“I have seen many hearts of pure light during my life, and very few have ever chosen to take up weapons. Even fewer have handled a Keyblade.”

And no others unleashed a plague on the worlds, she’s certain. 

“But that is no matter. I believe you were instructed to return home, were you not?” Yen Sid asks, raising an eyebrow. 

An embarrassed flush crawls over Kairi’s face as she looks away. In her mind’s eye, Sora’s worried face frowns at her and her flush deepens crimson from shame. Even that isn’t enough to make her agree. Not when Naminé is still out there. “Yes, but-”

“-It is of no matter to me, either. You have made it this far on your own strength. Besides, my own apprentice Mickey finds following orders difficult,” Yen Sid. He breathes out something that Kairi isn’t sure is a chuckle or not. Combined with the slight twitch of his lips, it may be possible that this ancient Master has a sense of _humor._

She can’t dwell on it, though. Not when Kairi deposits the Star Shard in front Yen Sid and not when he summons a projection of an injured Mickey collapsed in the same place they met before.

His friends try to tag along, but she politely declines. Mickey saved her once. It’s time to return the favor. 

Besides, there’s a chance Kairi will find _her_ there, too.

She’s grown stronger, in her magic and in the endurance that she’s gained from facing greater and more terrifying Unversed. She won’t lose this time.

With a bow and well-wishes trailing her out, Kairi hops on her glider and weaves through the Lanes, back to that world of dusty spires and howling winds that make her skin crawl.

* * *

Mickey lays on the hard dirt, bloodied and exhausted. The sight is a sickening reversal of their first meeting. Kairi drops to her knees and gathers him in her arms, her strongest Curaga spell falling from her lips immediately after his name. 

His breathing is shallow, too shallow, but the quiet whimper that escapes him as light green magic settles over the air around them is a good sign. He’ll make it. 

Kairi shifts him down, ready to get to her feet, but a voice freezes her in place. It grates in her ears, sending chills down her back. She expected to hear the hollow apathy of Naminé’s voice, not words scraped against her soul like the grit digging against her skinned knees.

“We meet again, girl,” Master Xehanort says, standing no more than ten feet away from her. She holds Mickey a little closer and leans away from the man in front of her, though neither move is conscious. The sheer reverence that kept her at a respectful distance from Master Yen Sid is dead in this world, replaced by a snarling fear that curls up her spine and turns her blood to ice.

She has no reason to be afraid of him. He’s the Master’s closest friend, right? He was invited to see Sora and Riku’s exam. She can trust him.

...Right?

“Master Xehanort,” she says. There’s fear in her voice where there shouldn’t be anything but pleasant respect. 

He kicks at a stray rock. A small part of her mind tells her that while his boots look like they’re only made of fabric, whatever armor he once wore now lurks inside the leather of his boots. He moves with more force than he needs to. He always has.

She… she shouldn’t know that. How does she know that?

He smirks at her, no teeth, just callous cruelty-

-And suddenly Kairi is ten years old and her limp body is being kicked over, unfocused eyes staring up at that same smirk and the blinding desert sun behind him. The picture, the memory, or vision, or _whatever it is_ , pulls at her mind and angrily slips out of her grasp before she can fully understand it.

She tries to chase after it, but as the picture grows fuzzier her mind freezes over. Clutching her head, she lets go of Mickey and falls to his side, her very thoughts threatening to rend her in two. The memories are _right there_ , yet she still can’t get to them. 

Once more, she tries to grasp them. 

She can’t.

She isn’t strong enough.

“Ah, yes,” Xehanort muses, seemingly to himself. His voice grates against the memories, feeling more familiar than it should. Or shouldn’t. It takes all her strength just to discern meaning from the syllables escaping him. “You are starting to realize what you lost - oh, but not for good.”

Naminé? Is that what she lost? Whatever piece of herself that Naminé holds claim to? Is that where her memories are - where the truth lies?

Xehanort reaches towards her. She feels like she’s caught in his hold, centered between his curled fingers. Her head screams with pain.

“You had to lose in order to find. Now it can be all yours again, if you only reach out and take it,” he says.

His fingers curl into a fist. 

“You’re talking...” Kairi trails off, struggling to summon the strength to push herself onto her hands and knees, “...about Naminé, right? She… she’s a part of me. Of my heart.”

“She is nothing but a shell, an empty vessel cast away from a heart of pure light. She holds the power that keeps you trailing far behind Sora and Riku. Clash with her! Reclaim the part of you that was lost!”

Kairi’s arms shake violently, but they hold her up. She glances at Xehanort, frozen in place by the wild look in his eyes. His grin is terrifying.

And she’s seen it before, she knows, she’s heard him crowing commands at her even as claws rend her flesh to ribbons-

-Kairi screams as her mind goes white and her strength gives out. She collapses once more, too spent even to spit out the dirt that slips into her mouth.

“You dreamed of becoming a Keyblade Master, did you not? Why chase after such a meaningless title, when your true destiny is so much greater than that?”

She cannot move, not now. All she can do is listen. 

“Gain your full strength and clash with a fated darkness. Only then will your true destiny be revealed!”

He goes on further, something about the creation of a Keyblade that isn’t like her own. One that can spell the ending of reality itself.

He reveals the greatest truth to her: that she is a weapon. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Then isn’t it only natural that a creature that’s already tearing worlds apart came from her? If a weapon is all she is?

“You were never meant to become a Keyblade Master. Eraqus apprenticed you as a means of keeping you close under his watch. Did you ever wonder why he forbade you to take the exam with the others? It was never because Sora and Riku trained longer than you have. Quite the opposite. He is well aware of the years you spent under my tutelage. No, it’s because he knows exactly what you are. And what you are - it terrifies him.”

She hears crackling come from above her, like storm clouds settling over her head. Darkness pricks at her skin, but it’s nothing compared to the lurching in her chest. “T-that can’t be true,” Kairi says. “The Master wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

“But what is an omission of truth, if not a lie? Eraqus knows exactly what you are. What you can be. It’s why he took you in. Don’t you know that yourself?”

She’s suspected something similar - that he trusted her light, but isn’t that different? Different from chaining her away in a gilded cage? For all the times she felt like a prisoner, she was an apprentice first.

...Right?

“Ask the man yourself if you still do not believe me. Now go!” Xehanort commands.

A fierce wind whips at Kairi, throwing her body like a ragdoll. Mickey gets caught in the vortex.

Xehanort disappears into the darkness as her vision blacks out.

* * *

“-ri? Kairi!”

Kairi comes to at the sound of the Master’s voice. Slowly, she forces her eyes open. The Master looks down from above, worry lines deepening the wrinkles already living on his face. She grunts, her mind still too frozen over to tease words out of herself.

Relief washes over him. “I was afraid you wouldn’t wake,” he says. “Can you stand?”

Kairi flexes her fingers and finds them to easily bend to her command. She takes the Master’s extended hand and gets to her feet without much trouble. Her mind still reels, but her body is surprisingly fine. 

She takes in her surroundings. The castle stands proud behind the Master, the most beautiful cage that Kairi has ever seen.

“Are you alone, Kairi?” the Master asks.

Kairi turns to him and nods. “...Yes. I am.”

He frowns. “How strange. I thought Sora would-” he’s cut off by the whine that builds in the back of Kairi’s throat, slipping out without her permission. It feels like so long since she’s seen Sora. His absence hurts.

The Master’s concern softens. He drops to his knees - he has always towered over her - and rests his hands on her shoulders. He barely has to reach up to do so. “Well, what matters is that you’re home.”

It feels warm, and for a moment it even feels nice, until his words chill her to the bone.

“You don’t belong outside this world yet,” he adds, in the same condescending voice that made Kairi turn her back to Sora and run as fast as her legs could carry her. “You need to stay here, where you can learn-”

Unable to take it any longer, she cuts him off. “Learn what, Master? Learn to be an apprentice forever?”

“What?” the Master asks, stepping away. She backs away from him, her instincts screaming at her to fall into a defensive stance. Instead, she squares her shoulders and raises her chin at him. A different set of instincts scream profanities inside her mind for being disrespectful, but she pushes them away as well.

“I know what I am. A Princess of Heart - someone with no darkness in their heart, only light. I also know that I’m some kind of weapon. That I have the potential to make some… some kind of χ-blade, different from what I have now.” She looks directly into his eyes. It takes all of her strength not to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness. “And that you never planned to let me become a Master in the first place. You wanted to keep me trapped so I could never become too dangerous.”

“Kairi, where did you _hear_ this nonsense from?” Eraqus asks in sheer disbelief, and there it is again, that- that _patronizing_ tone, that he never uses towards Sora and Riku.

“Is it a lie, _Eraqus?_ Tell me it’s a lie.”

The Master clenches his jaw so hard that it must hurt. Kairi wants to scream again. Her head doesn’t hurt, not anymore, but her heart tries to tear itself in two.

Maybe the only reason why it can’t is that Naminé already tore her heart to shreds.

_(Is that what the other girl feels? This constant pain? Or is she really the empty shell so many people tell Kairi she is? At this point, the only answer Kairi can believe is the one that falls from whatever lips hide behind that mask.)_

“I was hoping Xehanort would forget about all that talk. He could never let it go,” the Master mutters, seemingly to himself. He stops looking at Kairi, his dark eyes focused on something in the far off distance. 

Yet for all his talk, he never did deny those words. 

There’s a silence that stretches on forever. Kairi feels trapped, unable to go into the castle but unable to go anywhere else. She has no home but the walls in front of her. Nothing but a cage to sit and smile within, and hollow gratitude for the chance to work towards a goal that will always be denied to her.

She goes to leave, but the Master’s voice freezes her in place.

“I failed,” he says, still not looking at her. His hand lingers on the scar marring his cheek. “I had the chance to stop him and I couldn’t do it.”

His gaze settles on her. There’s remorse there, but the determination colors it to something muddled and ugly. “You are to never leave this land again, Kairi. Your training is to be put on indefinite pause. Do you understand me?”

So she’ll be denied even the pretense, too.

“I understand,” Kairi says, “but I refuse.”

“What?” the Master asks again. His befuddlement is there, but she can see a line of aggression running through him. She doesn’t like the sight.

“The Unversed are still out there! Still hurting people. Still ruining lives. And why they’re out there… it’s because of me. The girl who can control them - she’s a part of me. She isn’t darkness, so even if I fight her I can’t create that weapon, and I’ve gotten so much stronger. I need to find her, and I need to stop her once and for all,” Kairi says - no, she _pleads._ “I might be the only person who can.”

The Master gasps, his shock evident on every part of his face. It’s clear that he didn’t know the entire story. Kairi has a feeling that even she still doesn’t fully understand. That strange look in his eyes, the one that made her want to run until she learns what safety is, is back in full force. It’s dark and ugly. 

More than the darkness that storms within Riku, it is the look on the Master’s face that terrifies her.

It’s a pale echo of the warmth of the man that took her in so long ago. That cared for her like a daughter.

He shoots his arm out to the side and his Keyblade roars to angry life within his palm. He shifts into a fighting stance.

Against her.

“I will not fail to stop Xehanort again. He corrupted you long before you came into my care. There will always be seven pure hearts. Your light will pass to another, one who Xehanort cannot mold into a soldier to bring about more ruin.”

Kairi takes a step back. “Master, you don’t mean…” she trails off, unable to bring voice to even the possibility of what stands in front of her.

The Master takes a step forward. “I am left with no choice. Forgive me.”

Kairi opens her mouth-

“-But you must exist no more.”

Chains of light extend from the tip of the Master’s Keyblade, racing towards Kairi with abandon. Her shock overpowers her instincts, leaving her frozen in place as they encircle her. She can feel their power, shining with a light so powerful it threatens to burn her to a crisp.

Kairi closes her eyes, bracing for the hit she knows will extinguish her life-

-And Riku’s voice calls her name, even in the darkness. “Kairi!”

When she opens her eyes, she’s greeted by the sight of Riku’s back, clad in his yellow and silver armor. Way to the Dawn sits in his hand, singing the same somber melody she’s come to associate with it. It sounds like Riku, low and always one step from lonely. 

“What is _wrong_ with you, Master!?” Riku snaps, his armor fading from his body to return to the mysterious space deep within the castle where their armor always sleeps. Even though his protection leaves, his weapon remains, poised and ready to strike.

“Riku, I command you - step aside!” the Master orders. 

“And let you hurt Kairi? Not a chance!” Riku replies, raising his Keyblade over his head. The Master takes a step back, though his own weapon does not fade. She wishes it would, with all her heart. 

This doesn’t feel real. It feels like a nightmare, one so drawn out that she’s unable to wake herself from. Still reeling from her encounter with Master Xehanort, all Kairi is able to do is watch the two of them. 

“Why does it have to be like this!?” Kairi asks. “Why do we have to fight?”

The Master ignores her. All his attention is focused on Riku, just as it’s always been. “Why do all my attempts to reach you fail?” the Master bemoans. “If you don’t have it in your heart to obey, then you will have to share Kairi’s fate.”

At least the Master looks remorseful.

More remorseful than he felt for Kairi.

That hurts almost as badly as when he first raised his weapon to her.

The Master charges. Riku raises his Keyblade to block the strike. The clash of metal on metal screeches in the air, setting every hair on Kairi’s body on end. The sound is disgusting, every single part of it completely and utterly wrong. 

She never wanted this - any of this. Seeing them trade blows back and forth, each moving with the same ferocity that Kairi’s only seen Riku unleash on the Trinity Knight they fought together ( _and moving with the same ferocity she wields against the creatures that she’s unwittingly responsible for_ ). The Master is one of the wisest people she’s ever met - only Master Yen Sid is wiser. Is his choice to end her really so bad? 

His ultimate responsibility - their ultimate responsibility - is to maintain balance within the worlds. If ending her life would mean ending the Unversed, then what better way to restore balance?

She doesn’t want this, but since when has what she wants ever mattered?

Kairi feels tears prick the edges of her eyes, hot and heavy as they trail down her cheeks. “Riku, don’t do this for me! He’s right-”

“-Stop it!” Riku snaps, not even looking back at her. The Master aims a swipe for Riku’s ribs, which he sidesteps - directly in front of Kairi, always protecting her - before aiming a strike of his own for the Master’s head. The Master dodges just in time.

That strike would have ended his life, had it hit. She knows it.

“Riku…” she murmurs, the tears coming in full force. Riku surges forward, working his Keyblade under the Master’s defense. He swipes its teeth along the Master’s chest, tearing open his robes and leaving a thick trail of red in its wake. 

Blood, like Kairi’s hair, like the claws of that crystalline Unversed who stole an innocent life before her eyes, like the fingertips of the girl in the mist before Kairi knew she was more than a fever dream.

The Master grunts from the pain and leaps back. Green light settles over his body as the skin knits itself together - a Curaga in full force. With the wound taken care of, he takes his Keyblade in both hands and summons a blinding white light. It gathers at the tip, powering up in the same way the ship that carried Stitch away powered up before escaping to the stars, and aims a burst of energy directly at them.

Kairi tries to summon a barrier, but she isn’t fast enough. The light hits them both, battering their bodies and making her mind shriek in pain. She falls to the ground as a heavy thud sounds by her head.

She sees double, the grass below her rendered in two. It grows farther away as the feel of dewy grass is replaced by fresh spring air and a warm arm around her waist. She tries to lift her head, but her strength dissipates like mist in the hot sun.

It takes a few moments for her mind to catch up to her senses. She’s standing, almost, her weight entirely supported by Riku. She can’t see the next blast aimed for them, but she can feel it, in the hum of power that turns the air to static all around them. She hears it too, in Riku’s gasp as he must see it unfold.

“I don’t care if you’re my Master,” Riku says, shouting over the roar of the Master’s gathering of purifying light. “I will _never_ let you hurt my friends!”

The blow never connects.

Instead what Kairi feels is darkness, bursting with glee under Riku’s skin as it seeps out of him in curling tendrils. She grasps blindly for his heart, searching it with her own. There is still light there, but what remains is small, nothing more than a single candle in a cavern. This darkness curls around him possessively, never quite able to settle on her skin the same way but eager to consume his. 

The Master must see it - she can’t lift her head to look, but a darkness this powerful always breaks free of the heart that breeds it. She opens her eyes enough to look down, only to see the hand still at her waist rendered an inky black. His fingers, once paler than hers and tipped with blunt nails, now end in deep red claws. 

“Has the darkness taken you too, Riku!?” the Master shouts. Not in disbelief, but a confirmation to a question whose answer he’s already settled on. 

Kairi tries to respond, to defend Riku in his stead the same way he’s defending her, but the warmth around her suddenly leaves as she’s flung backward. She’s halfway inside a portal to the Lanes Between, though this one does not follow the same pathways she’s come to learn.

Instead, the same darkness that covers Riku still laps at her. It feels a little like him, oddly enough. 

It feels almost… almost like a comfort, beckoning her to somewhere else. Somewhere safer. Wherever Riku wants her to go to, it’s a place that he holds dear. 

It calls to her, but she can’t leave him here. Not like this - not to fight the Master alone! She calls to him, but her voice is swallowed by this strange portal.

The last thing she sees is that same inky blackness, trailing up his arms and settling around his throat. 

* * *

The world that Riku threw her into is strange, but definitely comforting. Grit digs its way under her fingernails as she digs her hands into the pristine sand below her, trying to regain her footing. She clambers up to her feet and throws herself towards the portal Riku through her through - and that definitely isn’t a portal to the Lanes Between, not with the way shadows curl and lick at its edges - but it disappears in a thin wisp of smoke before she can reach it.

Overwhelmed, Kairi collapses to her knees. Waves of sheer emotion wash over her, each a different shade from the last. There’s betrayal, sharp like a knife in her core at the determination in her Master’s eyes as he tried to end her life. There’s fear, creeping up her spine from the blow Riku took for her sake.

There’s guilt, heavy like a cloud of smoke that this is all her fault. Underneath it all is a low-simmering acceptance. Maybe he was right. What does her light matter when a piece of herself is destroying lives, and when her own life exists solely to be some kind of weapon?

She doesn’t notice the white mist settling all around her, cold on her skin despite the warm island sun. Not until she hears a familiar voice.

“You don’t remember this place, do you,” Naminé asks, her voice as hollow and emotionless as Kairi feared it would be. It hurts to hear.

For all the time Kairi has spent _(or wasted)_ chasing after Naminé, she’s the last person _(or monster)_ she wants to see right now. “Leave me alone,” Kairi chokes out.

“I saw what Eraqus did to you. Your own Master turned his blade on you. Just like mine.” There should be sympathy there, mourning a relationship that should have never gone so sour. Instead all Kairi hears is a simple observation.

As if Naminé doesn’t know that she should be sad _(or maybe she doesn’t know how to be sad)_.

“Were you hiding again?” Kairi spits, getting to her feet. She spins around. Through the mist, she sees Naminé’s outline on a bridge just overhead. Her mask is too clouded by dew to properly reflect Kairi’s glare. “Waiting until I was weak enough for you to destroy me like you’ve always wanted?”

“All I’ve ever wanted is to join with you,” Naminé says. “My Master told you what I am, didn’t he? But you still haven’t remembered the truth.”

“What truth!?” Kairi stomps her foot. Despite her exhaustion, Destiny’s Embrace comes to her hand, brimming for a fight. 

“Why an empty shell like me exists. You were so close to remembering back then. I could feel it. Your hurt,” and then, Naminé adds quietly, so quiet that Kairi almost doesn’t catch it, “I’ve always felt your hurt.”

Kairi’s heart lurches painfully. How can an empty creature feel _hurt?_ “You- what?”

“All you have to do is remember. Then you’ll understand why we have to join together,” Naminé says. Kairi nearly throws her Keyblade at the girl, but something stops her.

Maybe it’s the hint of emotion in Naminé’s voice. Something close to desperation. 

Something that isn’t hollow.

Kairi closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, all too aware of the eyes she can’t see staring right into her.

And she remembers.

* * *

Kairi remembers that world of dusty spires. She had trained there once, practicing drills in an unforgiving heat until the wind itself whipped sunburn into her aching skin. 

She was ten years old back then. Not a weapon. Just a child. That never mattered to Master Xehanort, not as long as she held the title of _apprentice_ and as long as the Keyblade in her hand continued to heed her call.

He pitted her against monsters. Creatures of pure darkness. Too many of them, twitching and seizing as their claws gouged that empty ground open. They were everything that she had never been.

She begged him to stop. Pleaded, cried, screamed, until she had no more tears left to give. Still, Xehanort did not budge.

 _“Clash with them! A pure light, pitted against pure darknesses! Form the_ _χ-blade and seize your destiny!”_ he had said.

 _“Master, please! I’m not strong enough!”_ she had cried in return.

Kairi had never wanted to be a weapon. Not back then.

_(Not now.)_

He had refused her plea, so she chose for herself.

She had looked her Master in the eyes and tossed her Keyblade away, letting it be swallowed up by a cloud of dust.

That’s when the monsters descended upon her.

When Master Xehanort finally took enough pity on her to cut them down himself, there was not much of Kairi left. The next memories come in bits and pieces; his eyes, cold and evil.

His words, stinging in her bleeding ears. “Really? You would rather die than use the power?” A scoff. “Feckless neophyte.”

A steel-toed boot, metal hidden under a veneer of leather, toeing her onto her back.

A Keyblade posed over her chest.

“If I must… I will extract your heart myself. Place it into a more willing vessel.”

And a part of her, taken. 

Not her whole heart. No, most of it remained within her body.

He only took a wisp of it. Just enough to form a new body, skin and muscle and that sinewy suit curled protectively over a tool in the shape of a girl.

Enough to fail at his own mission.

Kairi does not remember the name he gave the part of herself he took, but she doesn’t need to. She knows it now.

In the present, on this shining island, Naminé continues to watch her.

There is more that Kairi remembers. This world, seeing its stars and the ocean waves as she bordered the cusp of death. Someone saved her, back then, someone worlds away, though she teetered too close to death to hold tight to those memories. All she remembers are the waves, soothing her to sleep as she clung stubbornly to life.

She remembers going to the castle, what little of her mind remained focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Sora and Riku surrounded her, back then, eagerly peppering her with questions to understand more about her life.

She remembers falling to her knees and screaming. 

And she remembers a mist, always clinging to the edges of her vision. That, and the loneliness that pervaded it.

* * *

Kairi looks up at Naminé. Something has changed in her expression, she can see it. Where there was once rage, something softer and sadder lives now. Kairi’s never seen herself make that kind of expression before. It looks so wrong.

Is this the face that Naminé always watches her with? Is that why it hurts so much to see?

“I remember,” she says, watching as Naminé sits a little taller. “Master Xehanort... he- he hurt me. That made you.”

“And this place?” Naminé asks.

“I almost died, after what happened. I was saved here.”

“But you lived. You were strong then,” Naminé says. She launches herself off the bridge, landing with ease directly in front of Kairi. Empty Canvas comes to her hand, such a pristine white that the blinding sunshine peels off it in bursts. Kairi raises a hand to her eyes and looks away. “You’re even stronger now. Strong enough that my purpose is nearly fulfilled.”

“To become the χ-blade,” Kairi finishes for her.

What Naminé says next makes her freeze in place. “That’s your purpose, not mine. I’m a shell, Kairi. The shadow you left behind, nothing more. I don’t have enough of anything in me to create the χ-blade,” Naminé says, stating everything like it’s a fact. Oblivious - or maybe blatantly ignoring - the creeping sense of horror tying Kairi’s throat to knots. “My purpose is to make you strong enough to clash with a darkness and forge the blade.”

So does that mean… that the Unversed…?

“No… It can’t be,” Kairi says. “You’re lying.”

“That’s why the Master let me live. My Unversed make your light and the chosen darkness stronger. That’s all they’re meant to do.”

Naminé banishes her Keyblade, coming so close that Kairi would be able to feel her breath on her face if it wasn’t for her mask. Instead, all she can feel is her own guilt, aching deep in her heart. 

Those innocent people died to make her _stronger._

“Join with me, Kairi. _Please_ ,” Naminé says. For the first time, there’s emotion in her voice, something more substantial than the hollow apathy that Kairi has grown accustomed to hearing. She sounds desperate. Sad. 

All the more reason why Kairi can’t. 

A real monster wouldn’t know how to beg.

Kairi has seen countless empty monsters. This girl can control them, but she is not them.

_(The one in front of her is far from innocent, but does she also have to die?)_

“I won’t do it,” Kairi replies, resolute. 

“It’s the only way!” Naminé says, desperation turning to pleading. Her hands curl into a fist in front of the pale skin directly over her heart. Kairi has done the same gesture so many times before. She’s like a broken mirror. “You have to reclaim what you lost!”

“I’m fine the way I am now! I’m _happy!”_

“And I’ve never been!” Naminé says, so close to shouting. Her voice doesn’t quite get loud enough. Almost like she doesn’t know how. Kairi feels tears slip down her cheeks, hot and uncomfortable against her skin. 

_(Nobody cries for monsters. Not even princesses. This girl - she’s hurt, too. That much, Kairi is certain of.)_

“There has to be another way!” Kairi says, still refusing to budge. 

When Naminé recognizes this, her shoulders slump in defeat. “There isn’t,” she says solemnly. “It’s the only way.”

“I already told you. I won’t do it.”

“We aren’t given a choice. If you won’t join with me here, then I have no other option. Sora and Riku are on their way to the Keyblade Graveyard as we speak. The people you hold so dear will be destroyed. If you want to keep them safe, then you’ll have to join with me. It’s the only way.”

She won’t stop repeating that awful phrase. _It’s the only way._

It doesn’t have to be, does it?

Something red-hot and unbearably ugly surges within Kairi. She squeezes her eyes shut, a scream tearing itself out of her throat as she tries to block out the world. 

When she opens her eyes, Naminé is gone.

Kairi knows exactly where she went. 

Once again, Kairi has no choice.

* * *

Kairi grips her Wayfinder tight, the metal warmed by her own body heat from how long she’s kept it close. She hopes Sora and Riku kept theirs too. She doesn’t doubt that they’ll be here, even as nothing but howling winds and bitterness surrounds her. The air is dry and dusty, stabbing her lungs with every inhale.

Still, she walks. She has no choice. Naminé made that much clear. 

_(Do either of them, really?)_

She’s seen the dusty spires, the fields of emptiness.

The field of Keyblades sticking upwards in the dirt like an endless collection of tombstones is new. Every last one of them is rusted and worn, more ancient than she can even imagine.

Ancient, yet familiar. Master Xehanort must have taken her here, back when she was his apprentice - or his tool, realistically. 

Kairi holds her head high as she walks past them, ignoring the searing wrongness of the sight. Keyblades are meant to preserve the balance. Whatever happened here is a crime against every wielder who has ever stood to protect another life.

She finds Sora and Riku, there amongst the broken blades. 

She doesn’t need to hear their prior conversation to know that it isn’t a good one. At this point, she doesn’t want to hear it - it won’t change anything. It won’t change what she wants to tell them. 

This is not a happy reunion. 

“Master Xehanort wants me to merge with Naminé to gain my… my full power. That way, I can finally form some… some χ-blade.”

“χ-blade?” Sora repeats, confused. Riku’s eyes narrow. Only one of them knows.

“But the Master said we can’t let that happen. And he…” she trails off, tears pricking hot at her eyes, “...he tried to destroy me for it.”

Sora doesn’t look surprised; Riku must have told him already.

“What’s so special about this χ-blade?” Sora asks. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t really know either. But… it scares me to death. Even the thought of it,” Kairi chokes out, the tears finally falling. She used to hide away whenever she cried in front of these boys. They’ve never understood how to comfort her without making her embarrassed.

Something as petty as that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. 

“I don’t want to be a weapon!” she cries. The tears come in full force now. It’s a wonder she can still speak. Was she just a fool for thinking that what she wanted _mattered?_

Riku steps forward and ruffles Kairi’s hair. His silhouette swims in tears. “We’ll keep you safe, Kairi. Don’t worry.”

She cries even harder. 

Sora bounces forward and pulls her into a hug. “We won’t let anything happen to you. You’re not somebody’s weapon. You’re just Kairi. Our best friend.”

Here, with Sora’s arms holding her tight and Riku’s hand in her hair, Kairi feels safer than she’s ever been. 

She can see a world unfolding beyond her: a world where she lets Sora and Riku hide her away somewhere safe. A world where they go to confront Master Xehanort and Naminé without her, fighting as two gears effortlessly interlocking together. Always in step. Two halves of a whole that don’t need her to be complete.

There would be no χ-blade. Whatever damage that could bring about could never happen.

Her boys would fight and when the dust settles and a victor stands, all she could do is hope and pray that they’re the ones who remain. 

They would want that - they _do_ want that.

But that isn’t this world.

Kairi slips out of Sora’s embrace. Riku’s fingers fall through her hair, the red parting beneath his hands. She scrubs at her face and wipes her own tears away. 

“I don’t want to fight Naminé. I don’t want want to join with her, either.” Who would she be - who would _they_ be - if that did happen? Would Kairi still be herself?

She takes a deep breath. “But... if joining with her means stopping her… stopping the Unversed, then I may have to do it after all.” This is something only she can do, no one else. The way that she can keep them safe. What’s one sacrifice in the face of protecting the balance?

“Riku, Sora. If I join with Naminé, and if I stop being me because of it, then I want you guys to-”

“-Didn’t you say the three of us have an unbreakable connection? Not even Naminé can tear us apart. Lighten up, Kairi,” Sora says, pulling his Wayfinder out. The red glass glows in the sunlight. Riku glances at him before pulling his out as well. 

“We’ll always find our way back to each other,” Riku adds.

Kairi looks at them, at the determination that shines upon her, and pulls out her own Wayfinder. The bright sunlight scatters a three-part rainbow over their boots.

There’s always meant to be three of them.

Kairi slips the charm back into her pocket. “Please, put an end to me.”

Sora nearly drops his Wayfinder. The chain she threaded through the top is the only reason why it doesn’t slip through his fingers and shatter on the hard dirt below. He pulls it back into his hand and clutches it tight. “Kairi…”

Riku looks furious.

Before he can say anything, a thick mist settles over them. So thick that not even the hot sun can burn it away.

_(Kairi may have gotten stronger, but so has she.)_

When it clears, Master Xehanort appears from the white, Naminé following behind. Empty Canvas’s star-shaped teeth claw a line into the dirt as she walks. 

Xehanort - she does not want to call him Master; that title belongs to those who deserve it - looks eager, prepared for a fight. 

She can’t read Naminé.

* * *

“Behold!” Xehanort says to his audience of unwilling spectators, “These lifeless keys used to be full of power - united with the hearts of their masters.”

Kairi thinks of Destiny’s Embrace, of her own life extinguishing _(by whose hand - Naminé’s? Or Sora and Riku’s joined hands?)_ and leaving behind not a corpse, but a Keyblade doomed to rust away. She shudders.

“On this barren soil, Keyblades of light and darkness were locked in combat as the great Keyblade War raged. Countless Keyblade wielders gave their lives, all in search of the one, ultimate key.”

The story feels familiar, but the details feel all wrong. Had Xehanort told her this story before, back when she was his apprentice? Before Naminé was split from her?

It doesn’t matter now. 

Xehanort speaks with reverence. He orates with a divine authority that Kairi knows for certain he does not possess. “And it will soon belong to me…” he trails off, his hand slowly extending out in front of him. “χ-blade!”

His fingers split in two.

One towards Kairi.

And one towards Riku.

* * *

_A light and a darkness of equal strength must clash_ , is what Kairi understands. Suddenly, it all makes sense.

The Unversed were meant to make her stronger - but not solely her. Riku, too. To coax the darkness lurking deep within his heart out of him. She felt it when he protected her from Eraqus, the way the shadows licked up and down his skin. 

He looks the same as ever right now, still paler than her and Sora both, but she sees the inky black that crawls up his hands as he activates his armor. That darkness is swallowed up by the flash of metal in the desert sun, but she knows it lurks just under the surface. Clinging to him. Eating his heart alive.

It’s part of him now. Much larger than it had ever been before.

But that was the plan, wasn’t it? Her light couldn’t be any more concentrated than it is now, but Riku’s darkness could easily be magnified and focused. All he needed was a little push.

“Riku, don’t do it!” Kairi shouts, activating her own armor at the same time as Sora. Her voice isn’t enough to stop Riku from rushing forward, Way to the Dawn raised over his head as he prepares to strike.

All it takes for Xehanort to create a tower of stone, one that he reigns from, is a flick of his wrist. Riku hops onto a lower spire at the last second, but the one that Xehanort and Naminé stand on grows taller and taller. 

Xehanort does - he does _something_ , something that blots out the light of the sun itself and cloaks them in clouds of darkness. He moves from atop his spire like a conductor at a symphony, nothing but his arms and his hands directing their destruction.

An endless river of Keyblades, rusted from time and old blood, fly out of the ground. They warp the air itself, propelled by a magic far greater than Kairi can imagine.

Naminé drops from the spire and directly onto the river of flying Keyblades. She rides it with ease, standing as if on solid ground. She jumps from one Keyblade to another with all the grace of a dancer. Empty Canvas still lays in her hand.

The Keyblade calls to Kairi. It’s a part of her, after all. 

Riku gets swept up in the storm, battered by an endless stream of metal. Kairi and Sora rush towards him, but the Keyblades go for Sora next. Kairi summons a barrier just in time to protect herself from the onslaught, but her magic doesn’t reach Sora before the Keyblades do.

He flies off his feet and straight into the ground below, causing an impact so powerful that it leaves him battered and bloody in a small crater.

She wants to chase after Riku, still caught in the blades, but Sora’s more clearly injured. He has to come first. She runs to his side and drops to her knees, her heart breaking at the sight of him face-down in the dirt. His cracked helmet lays next to him, abandoned. He gets to his hands and knees as she shouts his name, but he isn’t preparing to heal himself.

No. 

What Sora does instead is shout, “Riku!” and send his own barrier spell snaking along the spire, up to where the Keyblades batter Riku. Kairi watches as magic settles around Riku’s armor, protecting him like another set of skin from the weapons. 

It isn’t enough.

The Keyblades break through and batter Riku, sending him flying like a ragdoll directly towards Xehanort’s feet. 

Kairi launches herself to her feet and up the side of the spire, pictures of what previously happened to her racing through her mind. Fear grips her like a vice, tightened by the worry over the ways Xehanort plans to break Riku, but it isn’t enough to freeze her. Not now. Not when she can protect Riku.

She jumps behind Xehanort, Destiny’s Embrace aimed for his head-

-And Xehanort disappears in a swirl of shadows. Kairi lands on the ground and looks around wildly, searching for where the man went.

She doesn’t see him.

She feels him, though. Feels him grasp the back of her head and hold her like she was nothing. She screams and struggles in his hold, Destiny’s Embrace spinning wild pinwheels all around her, but she can’t land a hit.

Naminé hops off the river of Keyblades and lands directly in front of her. Kairi can’t see her eyes, but she can feel them on her, freezing on her skin.

Riku shouts and surges forward, only to be caught up once more in the Keyblades. They push him off the side of the cliff and towards the ground. 

“Is it time?” Naminé asks. There’s an eagerness in her voice, one that wasn’t there before. 

“Nearly,” Xehanort replies. He makes a sound deep in the back of his throat - a chuckle, maybe - and sends a pulse of magic directly into Kairi’s body. Icy crystals creep over her, freezing her in place. She can’t move, can’t breathe, can barely think.

Xehanort casts her over the edge of the spire like she’s nothing more than a piece of trash. She hits ragged edges of the cliff as she falls down, knocking breath back into her lungs with the pained scream she lets out as she plummets.

Sora, far below her, scrambles to his feet. He doesn’t catch her so much as his body breaks her fall, sending them both skidding across the dirt. When they stop moving, Sora gently fixes her in his arms.

He cradles her like she’s something precious, like she isn’t the reason why they’re suffering like this in the first place. 

“I’m sorry,” Sora says, looking ready to cry. Kairi tries to speak, but there’s too much ice in her lungs. She can breathe, yes, but the only sound she can make is a hollow wheeze. She wants, so, so badly, to cup his cheek and tell him that he did nothing wrong. That he isn’t the villain she almost painted him as. That he’s only ever tried to protect her, to keep her safe. That even when she squirmed under his care and yearned for freedom, she knows it was only done out of love. 

She loves him, too. But she can’t tell him that.

She can’t do anything. 

An unfamiliar voice catches Sora’s attention. Kairi can’t turn her head to see this new _enemy_. All she can do is watch as a streak of dark magic shoots into the sky, parting the heavy clouds above them.

A moon appears in the sky, shaped like a heart. It casts a lonely light down on them all.

_Kingdom Hearts._

_(It has returned.)_

She doesn’t catch what the voice says, but she does hear Sora’s response. “Who are you?” Sora demands.

“You think you’ve got some grand role to play,” the voice says. It belongs to a man. It isn’t deep, but it feels slimy just to hear. “Your little princess right there has some claim to fame, at least. Pure lights are hard to come by, so I’ve heard. But you, pipsqueak? As if. You’re only here so when I finish you off, Riku will succumb to the darkness.”

Kairi tries to move, but she can’t. All she can do is stare above, try to will her mouth into closing and her eyes into blinking. They burn, even as the rest of her freezes. 

She feels anger, unfamiliar and hot, course through her. She spits out something. “Shut up!”

The voice laughs. She wills her neck muscles to move just enough to see who she has to fight next, once her body obeys her again. He looks as slimy as he sounds.

He has only one eye, shining gold in the dim lights. The other is obscured by an eyepatch. There’s a wound on his cheek, one carved deep with patches of darkness still clinging to tender skin. 

“Oh, so the little princess thinks she’s a full-fledged Keyblade wielder, huh? That’s adorable. Look, she’s even got the angry look down.”

“Kairi could kick your butt without breaking a sweat!” Sora shouts back. “And whatever you’re pulling isn’t gonna work! Our bond is something a jerk like you could never break!” 

Sora gently sets Kairi down. She tries to move, to follow after him, but the most movement she can manage is a twitch of her fingers from within her armor.

Sora summons Kingdom Key.

And he runs towards the strange man, falling into the same battle stance she’s seen time and time again.

* * *

Sora’s strong. Of course he wins. 

The man leaps away, laughing. “I keep forgetting not to mess with Keyblade wielders. But you know what? That just means I made the right choice!”

Sora growls. “Would you just _stop talking already!?”_ He lunges for the strange man, ready to swipe Kingdom Key down yet again. 

The man leaps back again, easily dodging the strike. “Well, he wanted me to buy time. I’d say he got it.” He turns tail and runs, a slimy coward through and through. Sora goes to chase after him, but he takes a glance back at Kairi and stops. She knows what he’s thinking - he can’t leave her like this. Not when she’s so vulnerable.

Kairi grits her teeth, grateful she can do that now at least, and tries to force her body to move. It still doesn’t work, at least not enough to get her off the ground by herself.

“What is he talking about?” Sora asks out loud. 

A figure in white sails down from the sky above. 

“Sora!” Kairi shouts, hoping that he’ll just look up and dodge in time, anything to avoid the Keyblade aimed right for his head-

-But he doesn’t. Empty Canvas slices through the air and right into the meat of Sora’s shoulder, sending him to the ground with a pained shout. Naminé lands on her feet next to him, but she ducks down and slams the hilt of her Keyblade into his temple.

His eyes flutter shut. For a terrifying moment, Kairi’s eyes are glued to his chest. Silently pleading for him to take another lungful of air.

It’s slight, but she sees the red armor snug around his chest expand and retract. His eyelashes flicker against his cheeks. 

He’s alive. 

Naminé stands over him, the teeth of Empty Canvas just inches from his heart. Ready to drag it out and cast it aside _(the same way she was cast aside… right?)_ or to simply plunge her weapon into his chest and prevent him from ever opening his eyes.

Her weapon stays focused on him, but her head stays tilted towards Kairi. A taunt. 

Rage pulses through Kairi. The ice on her skin and worked deep into her bones turns to water, then steam, as she forces her body to work through the spell. She jumps to her feet and launches herself at Naminé, Destiny’s Embrace eagerly answering her call.

Their Keyblades clash: one a rainbow of color, the other a blank slate.

In this state, there are only two thoughts that possess all of Kairi’s mind: keeping Sora safe, and stopping Naminé. Nothing else matters, not in this moment.

With a simple flick of her fingers, the rushing tide of broken Keyblades surges forward once more. Naminé hops onto the stream with ease, sending it right towards Kairi. She dances out of the way at the very last second, the wind from the soaring metal enough to send her hair into her face.

She shakes her head and aims a Shotlock for Naminé. Once she’s locked on, dozens of small fireballs race towards her enemy, battering her off the stream of Keyblades and sending them rushing off to another part of the graveyard. 

With the sun gone, it’s all too easy for Naminé to disappear into a cloud of thick mist. Vision momentarily blocked, Kairi summons a barrier around herself and searches for any flash of her opaque glass helmet.

She hears Naminé materialize above her head, made noticeable by the whoosh of Empty Canvas slicing through the air itself. Kairi dodges just as Naminé’s Keyblade comes crashing down.

She retaliates with the strongest Thunder spell she knows. Part of the bolt strikes Naminé and Kairi watches, victorious, as it travels through her body in one awful spasm. 

Naminé recovers more quickly than Kairi expects - more quickly than maybe she probably should. She shoots a Blizzard spell out of her Keyblade, aimed directly for Kairi’s chest. She doesn’t move in time to dodge the blow, but at least it isn’t strong enough to freeze her in place like Xehanort’s spell did. The ice crawls across her armor and bites freezer burn into her skin, but it isn’t enough to render her immobile.

Kairi yells and dives for Naminé, Destiny’s Embrace raised over her head in a powerful strike. Naminé isn’t fast enough to disappear into the mist before Kairi manages a decent hit at the girl’s side. 

Only for Naminé to appear directly behind her and jab the teeth of her own weapon into Kairi’s back. She stumbles forward and cries out in pain, but a quick Curaga spell muttered under her breath is enough to whisk away the worst of the damage. 

They continue to fight, blade for blade, spell for spell, quick technique for quick technique. They’re evenly matched in skill, but as the battle wears on and Kairi’s muscles begin to ache from the constant exertion, something occurs to her.

Naminé hasn’t healed herself once. Bruises bloom on the patches of skin unobscured by her suit, marred by bright red blood. It trails down her gloves and drips off her fingertips. It doesn’t come off as a point of pride, but of ignorance.

She never learned healing magic, did she.

_(She had no one to teach her, did she?)_

That thought is almost enough to loosen Kairi’s grip on her Keyblade. All it takes to strengthen her hold is one look at Sora’s unconscious body, far enough away from their battle to be safe. 

Kairi grits her teeth and turns her hesitance into yet another strike. Naminé doesn’t move fast enough to block his one. Destiny’s Embrace slams into her shoulder, driving her to the ground and sending Empty Canvas skittering away in the dirt. 

Kairi stands over her, panting. She backs away as tendrils of mist start to curl over Naminé’s suit, escaping her in thin wisps. It looks almost beautiful, if Kairi can ignore the droplets of red that also stain the ground.

Slowly, Naminé gets to her feet. She pants as well, unable to straighten her spine and face Kairi the way she has so many times before. She doesn’t summon Empty Canvas to her hand again.

When Naminé does speak, her voice is labored. “You did it, Kairi. I knew you could.”

She sounds proud. Excited, even.

It feels so wrong. Kairi wants to scream, but she’s stunned into silence as the helmet around Naminé’s head melts away. The frosted glass jaw guard, bulky and sharp as it is, remains in place. It looks even more painful this way.

The last thing Kairi sees in the reflection across Naminé’s mask is the shock on her own face.

Then, a girl stands in front of her. Just a girl. Pale skin, pale blonde hair pulled over her shoulder, long bangs hanging between pale blue eyes. She looks desaturated, almost, like every color on her is supposed to be brighter than it is. 

She doesn’t look like Kairi, which comes as the most shocking thing of all. That isn’t Kairi’s nose. That isn’t the texture of her hair. Kairi’s face isn’t nearly as oval as this girl’s. It isn’t _her_.

And yet, looking into this girl’s eyes, she feels familiar in a way Kairi can’t explain. She’s never seen her face, yet she can’t shake the feeling that somewhere, maybe she has.

“It’s time for us to join,” Naminé says, taking a trembling step towards Kairi. “My body is about to fade away. I can feel it. We’ll be whole again, after all this time. We’ll be complete.” The joy in her voice is unmistakable for anything else.

“But I don’t _want_ to join with you!” Kairi screams, looking around wildly as a thick mist settles over them. Even through the white, Naminé stands out.

Then the Unversed appear and dozens of Crystal Claws spring into existence, trapping Kairi in place. She tries to summon Destiny’s Embrace - all she needs to take them out is one solid hit - but a bite from one of the creatures sends a shockwave of pain through her system. Her arm falls to her side, temporarily useless.

Still, Kairi struggles against their grip to no avail. “Just- just tell me,” Kairi grits out. “I know you can control the Unversed! If they exist to- I don’t know, make Riku and I stronger so we can be your dumb weapon - then _why_ did those innocent people have to die!”

Naminé blinks. “I… I didn’t know they went after anyone else. I thought they’d only go after you. Riku, too.” She comes closer to Kairi, one staggering step at a time. The mist still swirls off her body. “I only did as I was told. I released them in every world I was ordered to go to. Every world I knew you would visit.”

Naminé stops directly in front of Kairi, just inches away. Her breath puffs against Kairi’s face, but it hardly feels like anything at all. “Once they leave me, I have no control over them. They’re not complete enough beings to understand something like desire, but if they did… then I guess they’d just want to spread the same emptiness that defines them. They only cling to you now because they’re drawn to you. Just like I am.”

“You could have stopped them,” Kairi spits out. “Those people didn’t have to die.”

“They didn’t, and I’m sorry for that,” Naminé says. There’s regret in her voice. It even sounds genuine.

The Unversed force Kairi to her knees. Naminé drops to a kneel directly in front of her. Her hand, her bloodstained fingers, find Kairi’s cheek. Her touch is so gentle against Kairi’s skin, holding her like she’s something precious. Something fragile.

For the first time, Naminé smiles at her. “Don’t you understand, Kairi? You and I are the same.”

Her other hand goes to Kairi’s throat and rests there. Not an action. Only a threat. “We were never supposed to have a choice.”

And the mist envelops them both.

* * *

When Kairi comes to, she finds herself in a strange place. Gone are the dusty spires and broken blades of the Keyblade Graveyard, replaced with an endless sea of black surrounding her on every side.

Her body is weightless. Slowly, she touches her arm, no longer gloved by the familiar plates of her armor. Her skin feels normal, just as her own touch does, but that doesn’t make the creeping sense of _off_ fade. 

Kairi rights herself, letting her feet fall onto a stained glass platform. She turns in a slow circle, taking in the picture at her feet. 

The platform is mostly pink. Her sleeping figure, pink Wayfinder clutched in one hand and Destiny’s Embrace in the other, curls on one half of the platform. Sora and Riku’s own Wayfinders surround her head, red and yellow standing in sharp contrast to her own colors.

On the other side of the platform’s glass is Naminé, flipped upside down as a distorted mirror image of Kairi. She sleeps as well, backed on an endless cascade of white and blue. Though Empty Canvas takes space in one of her hands, the other is empty.

It reaches towards Kairi.

Between the two of them are a few symbols: a strange Keyblade, the Unversed’s symbol, and an empty silhouette of a heart waiting to be filled in. To be complete.

This is her heart, she realizes - or at least, what it is with Naminé’s addition.

How could Naminé ever think she was empty, when the very picture at Kairi’s feet proves the opposite? An empty creature could never change Kairi’s heart like this. How many lies was Naminé fed until she stopped recognizing her own truth?

Kairi turns at the sound of boots hitting glass. Naminé stands before her, a strange Keyblade in her hand. It looks like two Keyblades joined together in a broken union, its edges rusted and shimmering in the hazy glow of an existence only halfway brought about.

It’s the same one stained into the glass below their feet.

She knows what it is, but she doesn’t want to give its name aloud.

Naminé looks ready to cry. “I don’t understand,” she says - no, she pleads. Tears spring up at the corners of her eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Then what _is_ it supposed to be like?” Kairi asks.

That flips something within Naminé. Her tears fall easily as she shouts, her words punctuated by careless swings of the blade in her hand. “Our union was supposed to be completed! It was supposed to be perfect!” But that isn’t what she fully means, is it. Not with the emotion broiling just under her surface.

“I wasn’t supposed to _keep existing!”_ She doesn’t say that to Kairi, not entirely. She says it more to her own white boots than anything else, or maybe to the rusted piece of death in her hand. 

From a space this intimately close, nestled within the jumbled together remains of their hearts, Kairi wonders if the shockwaves of pain coursing through her come from herself or from the broken girl sobbing in front of her. 

“I’m sorry,” Kairi says. She doesn’t know what else she can say at this point.

“If you’re truly sorry, then you’d complete our union,” Naminé says, scrubbing at her face to watch Kairi. Where Kairi expects to see is a glare is filled with nothing but more sorrow. 

“Fine,” Kairi says, not missing the fierce hope that suddenly shines in Naminé’s pale eyes, “Then tell me - what did you expect to happen once we united?”

“That the emptiness would leave,” Naminé says simply. For the first time, it isn’t as cryptic of a statement as it sounds. Not in this place, where Kairi hears the words behind it.

_I would finally be happy._

“You can be happy and still be you,” Kairi says. “Whatever Xehanort told you about yourself is a lie, I’m certain of it!” Kairi gestures to the pictures at their feet. “Just look at this! What kind of empty shell can take up half of someone’s heart? Does that really make sense to you?”

Naminé looks uncertain, tears forming at the edges of her eyes once more. She shakes her head. “You could never understand. I’m nothing without you, Kairi. Even if you’re whole without me.”

“You’re not nothing!” Kairi snaps. “From the first day I saw that mist, I wondered about you! Who you were, what you were doing here, if you were even real. And you are real! You’re just as real as me!”

Naminé starts to cry. She doesn’t stop shaking her head and wraps her arms around the blade, cuddling it like a child would a stuffed animal. Desperate for some sort of comfort.

And that, Kairi realizes, is exactly what Naminé is. 

Desperation - it’s a beast that can turn little girls into monsters.

What, then, could safety do to her? 

“What do you want me to do, then?” Naminé asks softly. “Keep existing? Stay hollow forever?”

“You won’t be hollow. I can help you! Me, and Sora, and Riku - we all can. Xehanort wasn’t kind to us when we were one. I doubt he’s any kinder to you now. Please. Naminé,” Kairi says - and the irony isn’t lost on her, that she’s the one pleading inside of her own heart - “You were wrong. You do have a choice. You always have! You can choose to be something other than what he said you were.”

Naminé holds the χ-blade even more tightly. The blade slices through her gloves, splitting the white sinewy strands with ease. 

There is no blood here, even when there should be.

“Y-you want me to do what?”

“Come back with me. Not as me, but as you. Disobey Xehanort. Stay with Sora, Riku, and I. And stop… stop making the Unversed. Stop letting them hurt people,” Kairi says. She can see that future in front of them, unfolding so easily. All Naminé has to do is say yes.

“It could never be that easy,” Naminé whispers. “My Master is powerful. He’s planned for everything. He-” she cuts her eyes off, her eyes widening in fear. The χ-blade falls out of her grasp, landing at her feet with a loud clatter that echoes in the empty space between them.

“What is it?” Kairi asks.

“He knew all along that I’d gain control of your body,” Naminé says. Her hands fist into her hair, gloved fingers pulling tightly enough to hurt herself. She sinks to her knees. “He knew that I wouldn’t get what I wanted. He knew I’d be in control, because you’d never fight Riku on your own. He… he planned all of it.” She laughs softly, yet something wild still lurks in the sound. Something unhinged. “He made it clear I never had a choice. He always has.”

The new information hurts more than a physical strike would. Kairi grips her own chest, looking down at the yellow Wayfinder right by her feet. Seeing it hurts. “I’m… fighting Riku right now?” she whispers, horrified, her eyes settling on the fractured χ-blade. 

That’s right. Xehanort did say a light and a darkness would need to clash.

“Riku is fighting your body right now,” Naminé says. “He… he barely looks human anymore. Darkness has taken so much of his body. Enough to clash perfectly with your light.”

“But you don’t have to fight him! You can choose to stop this, Naminé! You’re the only one who can!”

All Naminé does is shake her head, whimpering.

A steely resolve settles over Kairi. If Naminé refuses to stop fighting Riku, then there’s only one thing left to do. She knows how she can keep him safe. Sora, too, because there isn’t a chance that Xehanort will let Sora go free.

Kairi summons Destiny’s Embrace. She’ll save them all - Sora, Riku, even Naminé. 

This is what she chooses.

Kairi launches herself into the air and dives towards the platform, Destiny’s Embrace slicing through the empty space surrounding her heart. She drives her Keyblade directly into the center of the platform, sending shockwaves so powerful that they reverberate in Kairi’s teeth. Naminé loses her balance and falls, her own weapon skittering out of her grip.

A large crack appears, splitting it in two. Kairi forces her Keyblade in deeper, using every ounce of strength in this false projection of her body to break her own heart open. 

“Y-you’re going to destroy yourself!” Naminé cries, scrambling for the χ-blade once more. She jams it into the ground as well, using it as a stand to get to her feet. 

It’s never mattered to Naminé, that much is obvious. Nothing more than a way to protect herself from the world around her.

Kairi shouts.

The platform shatters.

* * *

After that, it’s easy to end the battle. Kairi can feel her heart slipping out of her body with every movement. Destiny’s Embrace grows weaker with every second, but so must the χ-blade.

This battle doesn’t end with a final blow.

Kairi can’t let it end that way. Not when the girl in front of her doesn’t deserve to suffer through yet another atrocity.

Kairi throws her own Keyblade off to the side. She floats towards Naminé, her hand outstretched. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. All I know is that you won’t be able to fight Riku like this for much longer. You can choose to end this. I know you can.”

Tears prick at the corners of Naminé’s eyes. Kairi has seen fear, but this is a level she’s never seen before. This girl is nothing but a lion forever trapped in a cage, terrified of the freedom that comes when that cage door swings open.

Kairi can feel it, her heart untethering itself from her body. Naminé must feel it too, with how she lets go of the weapon in her hand. It floats away from both of them.

Naminé hides her face in her hands and sobs. 

Kairi floats close enough to reach the girl in front of her. She touches the back of Naminé’s hands, careful to pry them away from her face. “We’ve both been through a lot. I could use a little nap, and I think you could, too.”

“The only thing I ever wanted was to be with you again, Kairi. I missed you since the day I was born,” Naminé admits, her voice choked by tears.

Kairi holds two hands in her own, gloved in white against the peach of her own skin. They’re warmer than she expected, full of life even in a place that isn’t wholly physical. This, she realizes, is what Naminé truly is. 

Just a girl.

“You can be with me now. We won’t be one, but we’ll be together. Is that okay?”

“I wouldn’t be able to say no even if I wanted to,” Naminé says quietly.

Kairi shakes her head. “I’ll let you leave if you want. But I’d really like you to stay.”

Naminé lifts her head up just enough to look Kairi in the eyes. Tears still trail down her cheeks, but she tilts her head slightly. 

A nod.

Kairi leans forward and lets her own eyes drift shut. She presses her lips against Naminé’s forehead. The gentlest touch this girl has ever been afforded in her sad life. 

“I’ll help you from now on,” Kairi murmurs softly, bringing Naminé into her arms. “I won’t let you hurt anymore.”

At least Kairi can save the person in front of her.

A light comes for them both, and they both fade.

Naminé does not see it, but Kairi can feel it. Two hearts, floating away together.

* * *

There are other things that Kairi does not see.

She does not see Riku, darkness crawling over his skin and dyeing his teal eyes golden, fighting a body not in Kairi’s control. She does not see the confusion on his face when the weapon in her hand shatters to pieces, in tandem with the invisible shattering of her own heart.

She does not see the shock that follows soon after, when Xehanort takes over his body. Not the vessel he wanted, but a vessel all the same.

She does not see Sora reach for her comatose hand in the aftermath. She does not see the view from over his shoulder as he carries her on his back, up the steps of Yen Sid’s tower.

She does not see what he turns the Land of Departure to in order to keep her safe. A princess finding refuge in a castle of scattered memories, a place she once called home.

She does not see Sora trail after a Riku whose self has been stolen from him, nor does she see the battle that casts Sora into the Realm of Darkness.

* * *

A voice calls to Kairi, even in oblivion.

A familiar voice, one of a boy she met once. The same boy who joined his heart with hers when an important piece of her was ripped out.

Kairi chases after the sound.

* * *

What Kairi does see. 

She sees a new platform before her, one that echoes warmth and safety directly into the core of her being. She sees Naminé at her side, rendered the same ball of warm light that Kairi’s own form has given way to. A heart in its purest essence.

Two hearts, really.

A little boy stands in the center of a platform of his own. Most of it is a bright green, covered in old books and bright flowers. Dark red crowds over the edges.

He cannot see her body, but he can sense her heart. Her’s and Naminé’s both.

“Hey!” he calls out towards the two hearts that drift towards him. “Can you hear me?”

Kairi’s own heart sings with joy. Naminé’s radiates surprise and unease. Despite that, she still follows.

“Don’t worry,” Kairi whispers to her. “This heart - I know this place. This is the boy who helped me when we were first separated.” She pitches her voice louder so the boy can hear her. “I heard you calling! We were in a really dark place, but we followed the sound here. Back to you.”

Smiling, he reaches out to them. Their hearts rest in his hands. Warm. Safe. Innocent. There is darkness in this boy, but not the suffering that these girls have seen so much of. “You gave me - you gave _us_ , a second chance,” Kairi says. “Thank you.”

“I did?” Ven asks. 

“You did! Oh, and remember the spell I did for you?” At Ven’s nod, she continues. “That’ll keep you safe, no matter what happens to you next. I hope it’ll help you.”

She expects Ven to smile, but he doesn’t. Instead, he focuses the heart next to Kairi’s. On Naminé. 

His face softens. “Why are you so sad?” he asks.

Naminé gasps softly, shocked that she’s even being addressed. Kairi hurts for her. “I…” Naminé trails off, clearly struggling to find the words to express herself. “I’m hurting. And I’m scared.”

“We have to sleep,” Kairi explains. “We’ve both been hurt. Is… is it okay if we stay here with you for a little while? Just until we can wake up from our nap.”

“Yeah! Nap as long as you want,” Ven says. 

“Is that okay with you, Naminé?” Kairi asks.

“...Yes,” she eventually says. “It feels… different, here. Like I can finally rest.”

“That’s what safety feels like,” Kairi replies.

“Safety,” Naminé repeats, the wonder unmistakable in her ethereal voice. “So this is what it feels like.”

They both choose.

Not to fight, but to find refuge.

* * *

The innermost reaches of a person’s heart takes the shape of a place they hold dear. Ven’s heart, for as young as it may be, is no different. 

Kairi and Naminé take shelter in a massive library. Books line the walls, stretching up so high that even when Naminé sits on Kairi’s shoulders and they stand on the highest floor, they still cannot reach the top. 

There are no doors leading out into the rest of Radiant Garden, but it’s enough to sit on a ledge of a towering window, pillows tucked against their backs, and watch the sunset scattered over the glittering fountains together. 

It’s peaceful. Safe. There are no monsters to hurt them here, whether made of crystal or flesh.

Naminé comes to learn exactly what her Unversed did to the world, told in fits and stuttering starts through what little Kairi saw of the chaos. They both cry during those stories, but the tears feel cathartic.

“I want to do better,” Naminé says one day, “When we go back outside. I want to help.”

“You will,” Kairi assures her, holding her hand tight.

In time, others will join them. Newborn hearts who have known the same emptiness and pain that Kairi is teaching Naminé to move past one gentle day at a time. They’ll find a family, then.

For now, they choose this, and they choose each other.


End file.
